Practical Transmitters for MC: Functionalized Nanodevices Employing Cooperative Transmembrane Transport Proteins

This paper presents a novel optically controllable molecular communication (MC) transmitter (TX) design based on vesicular nanodevices (NDs), functionalized for controlled signaling molecule release via transmembrane proteins. All system components are chemically realizable, bridging the gap between MC theory and practical implementation. The NDs enable optical-to-chemical signal conversion, making them suitable as externally controllable TXs in various MC systems. The proposed design comprises two cooperating modules, namely an energizing and a release module, allowing the release of different signaling molecules depending on the module configuration. We introduce a general system model and provide a detailed mathematical analysis of a specific TX realization, deriving both exact and approximate analytical expressions for the released signaling molecule concentration, which are validated via numerical methods. The proposed model also accounts for the impact of buffering media commonly present in experimental or in-body environments. We further incorporate the impact of multiple NDs and parameter randomness inherent to vesicle synthesis into our model. The proposed models for single and multiple ND scenarios enable system parameter optimization, aiding the future experimental realization of the proposed MC TXs.