Molecular communication via diffusion (MCvD) is a method of achieving nano- and micro-scale connectivity by utilizing the free diffusion mechanism of information molecules. The randomness in diffusive propagation is the main cause of inter-symbol interfe-rence (ISI) and the limiting factor of high data rate MCvD applications. In this paper, an apertured plane is considered between the transmitter and the receiver of an MCvD link. Either after being artificially placed or occurring naturally, surfaces or volumes that resemble an apertured plane only allow a fraction of the molecules to pass. Contrary to intuition, it is observed that such topology may improve communication performance, given the molecules that can pass through the aperture are the ones that take more directed paths towards the receiver. Furthermore, through both computer simulations and a theoretical signal evaluation metric named signal-to-interference and noise amplitude ratio (SINAR), it is found that the size of the aperture imposes a trade-off between the received signal power and the ISI combating capability of an MCvD system, hinting to an optimal aperture size that minimizes the bit error rate (BER). It is observed that the trend of BER is accurately mirrored by SINAR, suggesting the proposed metric’s applicability to optimization tasks in MCvD systems, including finding the optimal aperture size of an apertured plane. In addition, computer simulations and SINAR show that said optimal aperture size is affected by the location of the aperture and the bit rate. Lastly, the paper analyzes the effects of radial and angular offsets in the placement of the apertured plane, and finds that a reduction in BER is still in effect up to certain offset values. Overall, our results imply that apertured plane-like surfaces may actually help communication efficiency, even though they reduce the received signal power.

中文翻译：

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带有开孔平面的扩散分子通信的仿真研究与分析。

扩散分子通信（MCvD）是一种利用信息分子的自由扩散机制实现纳米级和微米级连通性的方法。扩散传播中的随机性是符号间干扰（ISI）的主要原因，也是高数据速率MCvD应用的限制因素。在本文中，考虑了MCvD链路的发送器和接收器之间的有孔平面。在被人工放置或自然发生之后，类似于开孔平面的表面或体积仅允许一部分分子通过。与直觉相反，可以观察到这种拓扑结构可以改善通信性能，因为可以通过孔的分子是沿着指向接收器的更定向路径的分子。此外，通过计算机仿真和称为信号干扰与噪声幅度比（SINAR）的理论信号评估指标，发现孔径的大小在接收信号功率与ISI对抗能力之间进行了折衷。 MCvD系统，暗示了最佳的孔径大小，可最大程度地降低误码率（BER）。可以看到，SINAR准确地反映了BER的趋势，这表明拟议的度量标准适用于MCvD系统中的优化任务，包括找到孔径平面的最佳孔径。另外，计算机仿真和SINAR表明，所述最佳孔径尺寸受孔径的位置和比特率的影响。最后，本文分析了径向和角度偏移对孔平面放置的影响，并且发现直到某些偏移值，BER的降低仍然有效。总的来说，我们的结果表明，即使开孔的平面状表面降低了接收信号的功率，实际上也可能有助于提高通信效率。