Molecular Communications: Model-Based and Data-Driven Receiver Design and Optimization

In this paper, we consider a molecular communication system that is made of a 3D unbounded diffusion channel model without flow, a point transmitter, and a spherical absorbing receiver. In particular, we study the impact of inter-symbol interference and analyze the performance of different threshold-based receiver schemes. The aim of this paper is to analyze and optimize the receivers by using the conventional model-based approach, which relies on an accurate model of the system, and the emerging data-driven approach, which, on the other hand, does not need any apriori information about the system model and exploits deep learning tools. We develop a general analytical framework for analyzing the performance of threshold-based receiver schemes, which are suitable to optimize the detection threshold. In addition, we show that data-driven receiver designs yield the same performance as receivers that have perfect knowledge of the underlaying channel model.