Performance comparison of message encoding techniques for bacterial nanonetworks

Utilizing bacteria as information carriers is a promising technique for molecular communication to establish connections and networking capabilities between micro-and nanoscale devices. A particular process, that is of interest in this paper, and vital to achieve reliable networking performance in bacterial nanonetwork, is conjugation. Conjugation is a process where bacteria come within close range to form physical connections to allow plasmids to be transferred. However, there are a number of processes that could cause loss or damage during the transfer process, such as external vibrations. Message encoding techniques are envisioned as a promising technique to mitigate these effects. In this study we first define the concept of optimal message encoding for bacterial nanonetworks providing the upper bound on the message delivery time and the probability of message delivery within the specified time. We then investigate the effect of encoding on the performance of these metrics by proposing and numerically comparing several feasible encoding techniques. The performance comparison has been done using a specifically developed simulation environment capturing bacteria movement and interactions. Numerical results demonstrate that even the simple encoding strategies allow to significantly improve the performance compared to the baseline system.