On the Optimization of Derivative-Based Receivers for Molecular Communications

Abstract

Inter-symbol interference (ISI) due to random molecule propagation challenges achieving high data-rate diffusion-based molecular communication (DBMC) systems. Recently, pre-processing the received signal by higher order derivatives has shown to provide an aggressive right tail suppression of the channel impulse response resulting in efficient ISI mitigation, and enabling the achievement of an order of magnitude increase in data rate while preserving reliability. However, the gains of derivative-based DBMC receivers are heavily dependent on the proper selection of the derivative order. In order to further improve the efficacy of derivative-based DBMC receivers, detector design and derivative order optimization is addressed in this study. Herein, the well-known fixed sample, fixed threshold detector (FSTD) detector is generalized to work with the derivative operator. For the derivative operator-FSTD pair, a signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio-like (SINR) cost function is introduced to optimize the derivative order. Numerical results confirm the accuracy of the SINR in derivative order optimization, and the efficacy of the derivative-aided FSTD strategy in terms of error performance.