Electrophoretic molecular communication with time-varying electric fields

Abstract

This article investigates a novel electrophoretic molecular communication framework that utilizes a time-varying electric field, which induces time-varying molecule velocities and in turn improves communication performance. For a sinusoidal field, we specify favorable signal parameters (e.g., phase and frequency) that yield excellent communication-link performance. We also analytically derive an optimized field function by formulating an appropriate cost function and solving the Euler–Lagrange equation. In our setup, the field strength is proportional to the molecular velocity; we verify this assumption by solving the Basset–Boussinesq–Oseen equation for a given time-varying electric field (forcing function) and examining its implications for practical physical parameterizations of the system. Our analysis and Monte-Carlo simulation results demonstrate that the proposed time-varying approach can significantly increase the number of information-carrying molecules expected to be observed at the receiver and reduce the bit-error probability compared to the constant field benchmark.