Dual Ionic Transport Using Ca^2+ and Na^2+ Signaling for Molecular Communication Systems

Astrocytes have the ability to modulate neuronal communication by regulating various levels of ionic concentrations. The development of models for molecular communication ought to investigate the utilisation of various ionic transportation mechanisms, with the aim of enhancing performance and biocompatibility, thereby facilitating co-existence within cellular tissues. In this study, we suggest the utilisation of both Ca<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{2+}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and Na<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{+}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ions to investigate the non-linearities of propagation in cellular tissues for MC. In this study, we also investigated the impact of various ionic transport mechanisms, including the sodium-calcium exchanger, sodium-potassium pump, and calcium pump, to assess their impact on the intracellular propagation of Ca<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{2+}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. We analysed four communication metrics metrics, namely channel capacity, bit error rate (BER), communication gain, and signal-to-noise ratio, to evaluate the effects of the transport mechanisms on the communication channel.