Weight shift keying (WSK) with practical mechanical receivers for molecular communications in internet of everything

Abstract

Molecular communication (MC) is one of the emerging technologies enabling nanonetworks and the Internet of Everything (IoE). The practical implementation of the intra-body MC systems is crucial for realizing smart healthcare applications, i.e., drug delivery, early detection, and health monitoring, through communication between nanomachines. A Flexure field-effect transistor (FET) based MC receiver, providing high sensitivity by utilizing nonlinear electromechanical coupling, has recently been proposed. It can also identify neutral molecules, unlike bioFETs. Thus, virus or pathogen detection can be performed with onboard computing by these receivers placed in the Edge. To date, biosensor-based MC receivers have been analyzed only for concentration shift keying (CSK), although weight shift keying (WSK) is a very robust modulation technique. The Flexure-FET-based MC receiver is a great candidate for use in a WSK-based MC system since its transduction mechanism relies on the molecular weight. This work presents the first practical approach to a WSK-based MC system with an improved Flexure-FET-based MC receiver. Its key performance metrics are analyzed from a theoretical MC perspective, also considering biological interference to obtain a more realistic simulation.