Experimental and Analytical Analysis of Macro-Scale Molecular Communications Within Closed Boundaries

Abstract

Molecular communication (MC) is an emerging field where the transmission of information occurs using particles (i.e., molecules, pheromones) instead of electromagnetic (EM) waves. This change in propagation medium opens up new possibilities for MC in areas where EM is inefficient or impossible such as underwater and underground communications. This study reports transmission experiments conducted to analyze the propagation behaviour in a closed boundary. It is shown that the behaviour can be explained by using the advection-diffusion equation (ADE) where the diffusion parameter of the equation plays a pivotal role in the process of the propagation. The signal properties of the transmission are analyzed and modelled theoretically and it is shown that the communication exhibits complex behaviour for signal amplitude, signal energy and signal-to-noise ratio with respect to transmission distance.