Diffusion Based Nanonetworking: A New Modulation Technique and Performance Analysis

In this letter, we propose a new molecular modulation scheme for nanonetworks. To evaluate the scheme we introduce a more realistic system model for molecule dissemination and propagation processes based on the Poisson distribution. We derive the probability of error of our proposed scheme as well as the previously introduced schemes, including concentration and molecular shift keying modulations by taking into account the error propagation effect of previously decoded symbols. Since in our scheme the decoding of the current symbol does not depend on the previously transmitted and decoded symbols, we do not encounter error propagation; and so as our numerical results indicate, the proposed scheme outperforms the previously introduced schemes. We then introduce a general molecular communication system and use information theoretic tools to derive fundamental limits on its probability of error.