Minimum energy channel codes for molecular communications

Owing to the limitations of molecular nanomachines, it is essential to develop reliable, yet energy-efficient communication techniques. Two error correction coding techniques are compared under a diffusive molecular communication mechanism, namely, Hamming codes and minimum energy codes (MECs). MECs, which previously have not been investigated in a diffusive channel, maintain the desired code distance to keep reliability while minimising energy. Results show that MECs outperform the Hamming codes, both in aspects of bit error rate and energy consumption.