Molecular Communication Noise and Capacity Analysis for Particulate Drug Delivery Systems

Particulate Drug Delivery Systems (PDDS) are therapeutic methods that use nanoparticles to achieve their healing effects at the exact time, concentration level of drug nanoparticles, and location in the body, while minimizing the effects on other healthy locations. The Molecular Communication (MC) paradigm, where the transmitted message is the drug injection process, the channel is the cardiovascular system, and the received message is the drug reception process, has been investigated as a tool to study nanoscale biological and medical systems in recent years. In this paper, the various noise effects that cause uncertainty in the cardiovascular system are analyzed, modeled, and evaluated from the information theory perspective. Analytical MC noises are presented to include all end-to-end noise effects, from the drug injection, to the absorption of drug nanoparticles by the diseased cells, in the presence of a time-varying and turbulent blood flow. The PDDS capacity is derived analytically including all these noise effects and the constraints on the drug injection. The proposed MC noise is validated by using the kinetic Monte-Carlo simulation technique. Analytical expressions of the noise and the capacity are derived, and MC is presented as a framework for the optimization of particulate drug delivery systems (PDDS).