An information-theoretic model and analysis of graphene plasmon-assisted FRET-based nanocommunication channel

Abstract

Nanoscale communication based on Forster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) enables single molecular nanomachines to communicate by transferring their optical excited states, i.e., excitons, between each other. Our recent studies revealed that FRET is a practical solution for short-range nanocommunications at very high rates. However, it was also proven that the reliability seriously degrades when the distance between communicating uorophores exceeds the critical Forster radius which is around 10nm. In this study, we propose to exploit Graphene Plasmons (GPs) incorporated with excitons as the information carriers between two distant uorescent molecules. The interaction between the optical excitons and graphene plasmons is a newly explored phenomenon, and this is the first study that approaches this phenomenon from the communication theoretical perspective. In this paper, we derive an analytical expression for the point-to-point channel capacity, and investigate the effect of fundamental system parameters on the channel performance. We show that information can be transmitted reliably through distances over 500nm with acceptable communication rates.