DNA-Based Molecular Communications

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel DNA-based molecular communication (MC) protocol towards high capacity communication between nanomachines for the first time in the literature. In the proposed protocol, the transmitter is capable of emitting DNA strands having different lengths as information carrying molecules. The Receiver contains receptor nanopores through which these negatively charged DNA strands pass, and duration of translocation event is utilized for selective sensing. We develop an analytical model for the proposed protocol to model diffusion, capturing, detection, and reception processes. In MC literature, the processing times at the receiver is mostly neglected, but our protocol is the first MC protocol which considers the effect of processing times that are dependent on the DNA lengths. In addition, the number of detected DNA strands show a significant dependence on diffusion constant, which changes according to DNA length. Therefore, we introduced a novel technique to minimize the effects of inter-symbol interference by adjusting the threshold level of each DNA strand according to its diffusion dynamics and detection rates. Furthermore, the proposed analytical model is exploited to derive information and communication theory metrics, i.e., capacity and bit error rate, for different communication metrics, such as DNA lengths, the number of symbols, molecule thresholds, and communication range by using realistic system parameters that are taken from experimental studies in the literature. In the end, the presented results show that the proposed DNA-based MC protocol is able to achieve capacity levels close to 6 b/s.