A space-time multi-input-multi-output system framework for touchable communication

A novel communication scheme called touchable communication (TouchCom) in the nanoscale and molecular communication area has been recently proposed, which is centred around controllable and trackable message carriers. A potential application scenario of TouchCom in the medical field is targeted drug delivery (TDD), which utilizes physically transient nanobots as vehicles to deliver drug particles. In the TouchCom-inspired TDD system, the loading/injection and unloading of the drug particles correspond to the transmitting and receiving processes, respectively. The nanobots are message carriers and their swimming paths in the vascular tree are the communication channel. The targeted cancerous tissue corresponds to the receiver. Built upon our previous work, we propose a multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) system model for application of TouchCom in TDD in this paper. We draw on the experience of the MIMO structure in traditional wireless communication systems to create a similar MIMO model in TDD system. Moreover, we propose an optimization mechanism for this MIMO framework and present a novel method to assess the corresponding system performance.