Bidirectional Molecular Communications in Blood Vessels

This paper shows a proposal for implementing a molecular communication system within an environment characterized by the presence of a dominant flow that transports all the particles present in the environment itself. A typical example of this environment is the circulatory system. The presence of a dominant flow makes the transport of particles relatively simple in the flow direction. Conversely, establishing a return channel turns out to be very complicated. The proposal illustrated in this paper focuses precisely on the return channel. In particular, recent studies have shown the intrinsic ability of bacteria to move upstream by exploiting the areas of the vessels near the edges, where the flow tends to cancel out. The proposal leverages these capabilities. In the paper we quantitatively evaluate the significant parameters that characterize the communication channel and propose use scenarios of the proposed system to address medical challenges currently under research.