ADMA: Amplitude-Division Multiple Access for Bacterial Communication Networks

Abstract

In a communication network with extremely high processing delays, an efficient addressing and multiple-access control mechanism to improve the throughput performance of the system is a necessity. This paper focuses on source addressing in multiple-source single-receiver bacterial communication networks. We propose amplitude-division multiple access (ADMA), a method that assigns the amplitude of the transmitted signal as the address of the source. We demonstrate using genetically engineered Escherichia coli bacteria in a microfluidic device that using amplitude for addressing is feasible. We analyze the performance of the network with several addressing mechanisms and propose an amplitude sequence and a low-complexity receiver design that minimizes error in resolving the source addresses in the presence of collisions. Finally, we demonstrate that ADMA implicitly solves the problem of multiple-access control.