Information Flow of Cascading Bacterial Molecular Communication Systems with Cooperative Amplification

Abstract

Bacterial ecosystems are integrated with cascading molecular communications networks that contain redundant paths transmitting molecular signals through a shared medium, resulting in accumulation of diverse molecules. Due to a range of factors, including residual noise and channel attenuation, the information flow between bacterial populations can be affected. Although the cooperative transceiver bacterial populations in parallel paths of the network amplify molecular signals to overcome channel attenuation, it further minimises the residual noise by absorbing higher signal molecules resulting in reliable information flow through the network. In this study, using information and molecular communications theory, we investigate the impact of Cooperative Amplification (CA) on InterSymbol Interference (ISI) in Bacterial Molecular Communication Networks (BMCN) with redundant paths. Moreover, we analyse the information flow through a cascading and parallel molecular communications system that uses different molecules as signals. We first show the effect of CA on the ISI and then the reliability of bacterial molecular networks using a vital metabolic functionality of the Human Gut Bacteriome (HGB), which is Short Chain Fatty Acids (SCFA) production. The analysis on the CA shows that the performance of the network can be enhanced up to a certain level by increasing the number of cooperate transceivers. Finally, the estimated Mutual Information (MI) for each bacterial population for three different networks using the data generated from simulations, indicates that the molecular communication network with redundant paths can support reliable information flow despite significant molecular residual noise.