Testbed for Molecular Communication System Based On Light Absorption: Study of Information Transmission from Inside to Outside Body

Molecular communication (MC), as a current research hotspot, provides a new method to achieve the communication between nanodevices inside the human body. However, there are still challenges in transmitting information from nanodevices inside the human body to the outside body. In this paper, a MC scheme based on light absorption is proposed for through-body communication where the information is transmitted by converting molecular signals into optical signals. A testbed is implemented, where animal blood and meat is used to mimic living environment more practically. Indocyanine green is used as information particle which is biocompatible. We carry out sequence transmission experiments with 660 nm and 800 nm light sources, and investigate the effect of the number of meat layers between the sensor and the light source on the transmission performance. The experimental results show that the proposed MC system can transmit information from the inside pipe through the meat, and as the thickness of the meat above the pipe increases, the light source with stronger tissue penetration ability can ensure a more reliable transmission.