Blood Makes a Difference: Experimental Evaluation of Molecular Communication in Different Fluids

The experimental appraisal of existing molecular communication (MC) testbeds and modeling frameworks in real blood is an important step for future internet of bio-nano things applications. In this paper, we experimentally compare the MC flow characteristics of water, blood substitute, and real porcine blood for a previously presented superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) MC testbed. We perform an extensive analysis of the channel impulse response (CIR) behavior of the testbed for the different fluids. Based on the identified MC flow characteristics, we extend an existing mathematical framework for our SPION testbed to capture the flow properties of blood. We evaluate its applicability to the collected data in comparison to two existing theoretical CIR models for MC in blood. In our work, we see that the added complexity of the transmission in blood opens up promising new possibilities to improve communication through the human circulatory system.