Experimental System for Molecular Communication in Pipe Flow With Magnetic Nanoparticles (2101.02201v2)

Abstract: In the emerging field of molecular communication (MC), testbeds are needed to validate theoretical concepts, motivate applications, and guide further modeling efforts. To this end, this paper presents a flexible and extendable in-vessel testbed for flow-based macroscopic MC, abstractly modeling, e.g., a part of a chemical reactor or a blood vessel. Signaling is based on injecting non-reactive superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) dispersed in an aqueous suspension into a tube with background flow. A commercial magnetic susceptometer is used for non-intrusive downstream signal reception. To shed light on the operation of the testbed, we identify the physical mechanisms governing the transmission, propagation, and reception of the information-carrying SPIONs. Moreover, to facilitate system design, we propose a closed-form parametric expression for the end-to-end channel impulse response (CIR). The proposed CIR model is shown to consistently capture the experimentally observed distance-dependent impulse response peak heights and peak decays for transmission distances from 5cm to 40cm. Moreover, to validate our testbed, reliable communication is demonstrated based on experimental data for model-agnostic and model-based detection methods.