Array Gain Analysis in Molecular MIMO Communications

In this paper, spatial transmission techniques in the area of multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) diffusion-based molecular communications (DBMC) are investigated. For transmitter-side spatial coding, Alamouti-type coding and repetition MIMO coding are analyzed. At the receiver-side, selection diversity and equal-gain combining are studied as combining strategies. Throughout the numerical analysis, a symmetrical 2 × 2 MIMO-DBMC system is assumed. Furthermore, a trained artificial neural network is utilized to acquire the channel impulse responses. The numerical analysis demonstrates that there is no spatial diversity gain in the DBMC system under investigation, but that it is possible to achieve an array gain instead. In addition, it is shown that for MIMO-DBMC systems repetition MIMO coding is superior to Alamouti-type coding.