Pulse Position-Based Spatial Modulation for Molecular Communications

Multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) approaches have been recently introduced to molecular communications (MC) in order to increase the communication throughput. For MIMO systems, index modulation (IM) suggests encoding information bits using the indices of the available antennas, rather than employing spatial multiplexing or performing other space-time coding schemes. Recent works have shown that utilizing the available MIMO antennas with the IM-based approaches improve the error performance of a molecular MIMO system, courtesy of molecular-IM’s robustness against inter-symbol interference and inter-link interference (ILI). Inspired by IM’s prospects on the MC, this letter proposes a novel family of the IM-based schemes to the MC realm. The proposed schemes combine position-based constellations with antenna indices to encode bits in and yield reliable error performances due to their robustness against the ILI.