An Effective Distance Measurement Method for
Molecular Communication Systems
Zhan Luo∗ , Lin Lin∗ , Qi Fu† and Hao Yan‡
∗ College of Electronics and Information Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
† School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China
‡ School of Electronic, Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Abstract—Molecular communication is a promising communi-
cation paradigm for the applications of biomedical engineering,
nano-material manufacturing, etc., at nano- to microscale. Mea-
suring distance between nanomachines is critical for adaptive
communication design or location-based functionalities. In this
paper a novel effective distance estimation method is proposed.
Two types of molecules are released by the transmitter nanoma-
chine. Due to the different diffusivity of the different types of
molecules, the receiver can estimate the distance. Synchronization
between the transmitter and the receiver is not required. The
simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme has a
good performance in terms of accuracy and anti-noise ability.
Index Terms—Distance measurement, molecular communica-
tion, nanomachine, one-way communication.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Molecular communication is a novel communication
paradigm in a micro- or nano- scale [1]. Different from
conventional communications, molecular communication uses
molecules as the carriers of information. Information can be
modulated on different properties of the molecules [2]. For
example, it can be encoded into the concentration of the
molecules. The information can also be encoded into the
types of the molecules. Or the time of release can be used to
encode the information. The molecules carrying information
are released by a transmitter nanomachine and propagate in
the fluid medium to a receiver nanomachine. The receiver
nanomachine then detects and decodes the information [3].
Molecular communication enables future applications in bio-
logical engineering such as drug delivery and cancer treatment
[4], [5], material manufacturing [6], environment monitoring
and military applications [2].
In molecular communication, the distance between nanoma-
chines is an essential parameter. It can be used to compute the
channel impulse response and further make signal detection
[7] or used for clock synchronization [8]. Another example
is given in the implementation of the protocols presented in
the work of [9], with a pre-known distance, the nanomachines
can make a better selection of the transmission rate and the
number of released molecules to balance the time and energy
costs during the transmission.
For the distance measurement, several protocols and
schemes have been proposed. In [10], round-trip-time (RTT)
and signal attenuation (SA) protocols based on single spike
feedback signals are proposed to measure the distance. One
nanomachine releases a single spike of type A molecules.
978-1-5386-5241-1/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
Once the other nanomachine detects A molecules, it releases
a single spike of type B molecules immediately. The original
nanomachine detects the type B molecule. This is a two-
way estimation scheme, which costs a lot of time. And the
immediate transmission of feedback signal is a challenge for
the nanomachine. For example, if there exists a protocol stack,
it will need time to process the data and make the distance
estimation method inaccurate. In [11], two distance estimation
schemes have been proposed. The nanomachines are consid-
ered in a 1-D situation. In the peak detection method, the value
of the peak concentration is used to calculate the distance. The
advantage is that there is no clock synchronization required.
The disadvantage is that the value of the concentration needs
to be measured very accurately. So it is prone to inter-symbol
interference (ISI) and noise. Some improvement with the idea
of “averaging” has been proposed to overcome the noise
induced by the molecular random walk. The other scheme
uses double spikes and calculates the time difference between
the peak concentrations. The time difference can be used to
estimate the distance. The limitation is that the relationship
between the time difference of peak concentrations and the
distance needs to be known in advance. In [9], the authors
proposed a distance estimation approach by measuring the
concentration-peak time or received concentration energy. The
former approach requires clock synchronization between the
nanomachines, which needs extra computational and energy
resources [12], [13]. The latter approach has a higher require-
ment of the computational complexity.
In this paper, we propose a novel effective distance esti-
mation method in a 1-D environment. In contrast to [10], we
propose a one-way distance estimation scheme, which costs
less time. In contrast to [9], the proposed scheme does not
need synchronization, and the complexity is low. Two types
of molecules are used in one-way method to estimate the
distance. The receiver receives molecules emitted by the trans-
mitter and records the time stamps to calculate the distance.
The clock synchronization between the nanomachines is not
required. The main contributions of this paper include:
• An effective one-way distance estimation scheme is pro-
posed.
• The estimator of the distance between nanomachines is
derived.
• The influence of the noise on the distance estimation is

Fig. 1. A point-to-point molecular communication system in 1-D environ-
ment.
analyzed.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
We suppose a point-to-point molecular communication sce-
nario, i.e., there is a single transmitter and a single receiver in
an unbounded 1-D environment without flow. The transmitter
nanomachine transmits spike signals of molecules, and the
receiver receives the molecule signals to measure distance
between two nanomachines.
Fig. 1 illustrates that the transmitter transmits signals of
molecules to the receiver. The distance of two nanomachines
is d. It is assumed that the d is much larger than the diameter of
both of the nanomachines. The transmitter containing vesicles
for storing molecules releases molecules into the environment.
The receiver has receptors for sensing molecules when the
molecules come to contact them. The transmission process,
molecule propagation process, and reception process are de-
scribed in detail below.
A. Transmission Process
The transmitter nanomachine transmits signals by releasing
molecules. There are three main modulation schemes so far.
The information can be modulated on properties of informa-
tion molecules such as the number of molecules (concentration
shift-keying, abbreviated as CSK), the type of molecules, and
the time of molecule releasing [2]. Type based modulation is
adopted in this paper. A spike of the same type of molecules
are released into the environment instantly. The concentration
of information molecules at the position d and the time t is
denoted by C(d, t).
B. Molecule Propagation Process
Molecules propagate in the environment by free diffu-
sion. From a macroscopic perspective, the movement of the
molecules is driven by the difference of the concentration,
where flux goes from regions from high concentration to
regions of low concentration. The magnitude of the flux is
proportional to the concentration gradient, expressed as
∂C(d, t)
J = −D , (1)
∂d
where J is the diffusion flux. D is the diffusion coefficient.
!# !$
Receiver
 

 

Transmitter
!" !%
Fig. 2. Distance estimation model.
This is the Fick’s second law of diffusion. The solution of
this equation is
N −d2
C (d, t) = √
e 4Dt , (3)
4πDt
where N represents the number of emitted molecules.
C. Reception Process
When the receptor senses the signal of molecules, it will
initiate some chemical process to get valid information. In
this paper, the time instant when the concentration of the
molecules at receiver side reaches its maximum is defined as
the received time. The peak concentration can be judged by
”derivative sign” module mentioned in [10]. We need to record
the received time instant for distance estimation.
III. D ESIGN FOR D ISTANCE M EASUREMENT
In this section, a novel distance measurement method is
proposed by using two types of molecules. The channel noise
is also discussed and analyzed.
A. Distance Measurement
To calculate the distance, the transmitter sends two types
of signals of molecules. As shown in Fig. 2, the transmitter
releases type A molecules into the environment at the time
instant t0 , which is the local clock of the transmitter. The
molecules can be synthesized using a header, a trailer, and
chemical elements with chemical bonds [13]. The time dura-
tion for synthesizing molecules is assumed to be ignored. The
After free diffusion of the molecules, the peak concentration
of information molecules is received by the receiver at t1 ,
which is the local clock of the receiver. The transmitter also
sends type B molecules into the environment at the time
instant t2 . Once the information molecules diffuse and arrive
at the receiver, the receiver demodulates and records the peak
concentration time as t3 . After twice message transmission,
the receiver can estimate the distance between the transmitter
and the receiver.
Next, the method for calculating the distance between the
two nanomachines is derived. Assume that the transmitter
releases type A molecules at the time instant t0 . The diffusion
coefficient is DA . To calculate the peak concentration time
tpeak , we take derivative of CN,DA (d, t) with respect to t and
set to zero
If we consider the two directional flux in the one-dimensional 
channel, we have ∂CN,DA (d, t) 
∂t t=tpeak,A = 0. (4)
∂C(d, t) ∂ 2 C(d, t)
= −D . (2) By solving this equation, we can obtain
∂t ∂d2
 2.5
Molecule A
d2 Molecule B

tpeak,A = . (5)
2DA 2

The time difference between the time instant the transmitter

releases molecules and the time instant the receiver receives

Concentration
1.5

molecules is defined as tpeak . Assume that the clock offset

between the transmitter and the receiver is ϕ. The relationship 1

among tpeak , t0 , t1 , and ϕ is

0.5

tpeak,A = t1 − ϕ − t0 . (6)
0
Then we have 0 50 100 150
Time
200 250 300

d2 Fig. 3. The molecular concentration with respect to the time for fixed distance.
tpeak,A = t1 − ϕ − t0 = . (7)
2DA
Similarly, when the transmitter transmits type B molecules
Fig. 3 shows the receiving concentrations of molecule A
at t2 and received by receiver at t3 , we have
and molecule B versus time t, where DA = 1000 µm2 /sec and
d2 DB = 100 µm2 /sec. If the additive Gaussian noise is assumed,
tpeak,B = t3 − ϕ − t2 = . (8) the actual peak observation is more likely to occur after the
2DB
expected peak instead of before, because the curve on the
Subtracting both sides of (8) and (7), respectively, we can right side has less steeper slope than the left. So error1 and
obtain error2 are more likely to be positive. From the figure the
curve for molecule B declines much more slowly than that of
d2 d2
t3 − t1 − (t2 − t0 ) = − . (9) molecule A because the diffusion coefficient of molecule A
2DB 2DA is bigger than that of molecule B. So it is more likely that
Rearranging (9) and introducing the notation ∆tR = t3 − t1 error1 > error2 > 0.
and ∆tT = t2 − t0 , we can get the distance d as In next Section, we will discuss the performance of the
√ estimation scheme and compare it with RTT [10] and Cpeak
2DA DB (∆tR − ∆tT ) [11] in the presence of noise.
d= . (10)
DA − DB
IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS
It is clear that if the diffusion coefficients, DA and DB ,
are known, the receiver can calculate the distance between the In this section, simulations by MATLAB are performed to
two nanomachines by timestamps t0 , t1 , t2 , and t3 . We can evaluate the proposed distance measurement scheme. For the
also see that the solution is not influenced by clock offset, i.e., simulation, the transmitter release N type A molecules into
we can calculate the distance between two nanomachines with the environment at t0 . These molecules propagate and the
unsynchronized clock. concentration of molecules goes by t according to (3). The
concentration of the molecules is sensed by the receiver. Type
B. Noise Analysis B molecules are sent similarly. The transmitter transmits these
In the real scenario, the noise exists in the transmission two kinds of molecules periodically. The peak concentration is
channel between the two nanomachines. The noise of signal affected by the noise of the random walk molecules. This noise
is from the motion of molecules in microscopic level and it can is Gaussian noise mentioned in Section III-B. The parameters
be modeled by a random walk [14]. The displacement of each in the simulations are set as: for each single spike, the number
molecule during an infinitesimal interval of ∆t, is modeled as of molecules is N = 10000. The diffusion coefficients for
a Gaussian distribution with mean zero and variance 2D∆t type A molecule is DA = 1000 µm2 /sec and type B molecule
[15]. If the noise exists, the peak concentration detected by is 100 µm2 /sec [16], respectively. The distance between two
the receiver would be different from the theoretical peak nanomachines is from 0 µm to 150 µm [9]. The signal to noise
concentration. The received time is also influenced by the ratio (SNR) is set from 0 dB to 30 dB. The above-mentioned
noise, leading to the measuring error of t1 and t3 , finally parameters are given in Table I.
causing the error in distance estimation. In the presence of Fig. 4 describes the estimated distance versus the real
noise, ∆tR can be expressed as distance. The parameter is set as: SNR = 20 dB. It is clearly
shown that as the real distance increases, the estimated dis-
∆tR = (t3 + error1 ) − (t1 + error2 ), (11) tance value is greater than the true distance value and the
estimated accuracy decreases. The reason is that as the increase
where error1 and error2 is the measuring error of t1 and t3 , of the distance, the peak concentration becomes less sharp,
respectively. which will cause the error of the estimated the peak time
 TABLE I 22
Proposed scheme
S YSTEM PARAMETERS 20 RTT
Cpeak

18
Parameters Symbol Values
Diffusion coefficient DA 1000 µm2 /sec 16

Diffusion coefficient DB 100 µm2 /sec 14

Error (
m)
The number of molecules N 10000
Theoretical distance d (0 ∼ 150) µm 12

Signal to noise ratio SNR (0 ∼ 30) dB 10

6
180 Proposed scheme
Expected distance 4
160

2
140 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
SNR (dB)
Estimated distance (
m)

120

100 Fig. 5. The error of the estimated distance with respect to the SNR for three
different methods.
80

60

40
20
0 Nov. 2011.
0 25 50 75
Distance (
m)
Fig. 4. The estimation result of distance goes by real distance under the
influence of noise induced by random walk of diffusing molecules.
becomes larger. This implies that our scheme is more suitable
for short distance estimation.
Fig. 5 describes the error of the estimated distance versus
the SNR for three different methods. The parameters are
set as: DB = 100 µm2 /sec, d = 100 µm. From the figure,
although all of the errors decrease as the SNR goes larger, the
accuracy performance of our scheme is better than the other
two methods. The reason is: the received time t1 and t3 are
both affected by the noise, which can be expressed as ∆tR =
(t3 + error1 ) − (t1 + error2 ) = t3 − t1 + (error1 − error2 ).
Because it is more likely that error1 > error2 > 0, so the
subtraction will reduce the error, therefore obtain better accu-
racy. That implies that our scheme has a good performance
against noise.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, a novel effective distance estimation method
between two nanomachines is proposed. The transmitter and
the receiver communicate with each other in the 1-D situation
and the receiver can measure the distance with the transmitter
through releasing the two types of molecules by the trans-
mitter. The simulation results demonstrate that our scheme
works well and performs better than RTT protocol and Cpeak
protocol. In addition, clock synchronization is not needed in
our scheme.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foun-
dation, China (61502295). Lin Lin is corresponding author.
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