Molecular Communications (MC) is a bio-inspired communication technique that uses molecules to transfer information among bio-nano devices. In this paper, we focus on the detection problem for biological MC receivers employing ligand receptors to infer the transmitted messages encoded into the concentration of molecules, i.e., ligands. In practice, receptors are not ideally selective against target ligands, and in physiological environments, they can interact with multiple types of ligands at different reaction rates depending on their binding affinity. This molecular cross-talk can cause a substantial interference on MC. Here we consider a particular scenario, where there is non-negligible concentration of interferer molecules in the channel, which have similar receptor-binding characteristics with the information molecules, and the receiver employs single type of receptors. We investigate the performance of four different detection methods, which make use of different statistics of the ligand-receptor binding reactions: instantaneous number of bound receptors, unbound time durations of receptors, bound time durations of receptors, and combination of unbound and bound time durations of receptors within a sampling time interval. The performance of the introduced detection methods are evaluated in terms of bit error probability for varying strength of molecular interference, similarity between information and interferer molecules, number of receptors, and received concentration difference between bit-0 and bit-1 transmissions. We propose synthetic receptor designs that can convert the required receptor statistics to the concentration of intracellular molecules, and chemical reaction networks that can chemically perform the computations required for detection.

分子通信 (MC) 是一种仿生通信技术，它使用分子在生物纳米设备之间传输信息。在本文中，我们专注于生物 MC 接收器的检测问题，该接收器采用配体受体来推断编码为分子浓度的传输信息，即配体。在实践中，受体对目标配体的选择性并不理想，在生理环境中，它们可以根据其结合亲和力以不同的反应速率与多种类型的配体相互作用。这种分子串扰会对 MC 造成严重干扰。在这里，我们考虑一个特定的场景，其中通道中存在不可忽略的干扰分子浓度，它们与信息分子具有相似的受体结合特性，接收器采用单一类型的接收器。我们研究了四种不同检测方法的性能，这些方法利用了配体-受体结合反应的不同统计数据：结合受体的瞬时数量、受体的未结合持续时间、受体的结合持续时间以及未结合和结合持续时间的组合采样时间间隔内的受体。引入的检测方法的性能根据不同分子干扰强度的误码概率、信息和干扰分子之间的相似性、受体数量以及比特 0 和比特 1 传输之间的接收浓度差异进行评估。我们提出合成受体设计，可以将所需的受体统计数据转换为细胞内分子的浓度，