The Effect of Two Receivers on Broadcast Molecular Communication Systems

Molecular communication is a paradigm that utilizes molecules to exchange information between nano-machines. When considering such systems where multiple receivers are present, prior work has assumed for simplicity that they do not interfere with each other. This paper aims to address this issue and shows to what extent an interfering receiver, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text {R}_{\mathrm {I}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, will have an impact on the target receiver, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text {R}_{\mathrm {T}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, with respect to Bit Error Rate (BER) and capacity. Furthermore, approximations of the Binomial distribution are applied to reduce the complexity of calculations. Results show the sensitivity in communication performance due to the relative location of the interfering receiver. Critically, placing <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text {R}_{\mathrm {I}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> between the transmitter <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text {T}_{\mathrm {X}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text {R}_{\mathrm {T}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> causes a significant increase in BER or decrease in capacity.