Analysis of MC Systems Employing Receivers Covered by Heterogeneous Receptors

This paper investigates the channel impulse response (CIR), i.e., molecule hitting rate, of a molecular communication (MC) system employing an absorbing receiver (RX) covered by multiple non-overlapping receptors. In this system, receptors are heterogeneous, they may have different sizes and arbitrary locations. Furthermore, we consider two types transmitter (TX), namely point TX membrane fusion (MF)-based spherical TX. We assume or center MF-based has fixed distance to RX. Given distance, can be at locations CIR RX depends on exact location By averaging over all possible locations, analyze expected rate as function receptors, where degradation occur during propagation signaling molecules. Notably, our analysis is valid for numbers, wide range sizes, its accuracy confirmed via particle-based simulations. Exploiting numerical results, show that number absorbed molecules increases with when total area surface fixed. Based derived analytical expressions, compare geometric receptor distributions examining evenly distributed result in larger than other distributions. further three models combine TXs RXs. Compared ideal model fully RX, practical heterogeneous yields lower peak CIR, suffers from more severe inter-symbol interference, gives rise higher average bit error (BER). underlines importance TX-RX since existing BER analyses based do not reflect performance achievable practice. Numerical results vesicle generation same harvested TX, but received signal