With much advancement in the field of nanotechnology, bioengineering and synthetic biology over the past decade, microscales and nanoscales devices are becoming a reality. Yet the problem of engineering a reliable communication system between tiny devices is still an open problem. At the same time, despite the prevalence of radio communication, there are still areas where traditional electromagnetic waves find it difficult or expensive to reach. Points of interest in industry, cities, and medical applications often lie in embedded and entrenched areas, accessible only by ventricles at scales too small for conventional radio waves and microwaves, or they are located in such a way that directional high frequency systems are ineffective. Inspired by nature, one solution to these problems is molecular communication (MC), where chemical signals are used to transfer information. Although biologists have studied MC for decades, it has only been researched for roughly 10 year from a communication engineering lens. Significant number of papers have been published to date, but owing to the need for interdisciplinary work, much of the results are preliminary. In this paper, the recent advancements in the field of MC engineering are highlighted. First, the biological, chemical, and physical processes used by an MC system are discussed. This includes different components of the MC transmitter and receiver, as well as the propagation and transport mechanisms. Then, a comprehensive survey of some of the recent works on MC through a communication engineering lens is provided. The paper ends with a technology readiness analysis of MC and future research directions.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorial

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Abstract-Communication via diffusion of molecules is an effective method for transporting information in nanonetworks.In this paper, novel modulation techniques called Concentration Shift Keying (CSK) and Molecule Shift Keying (MoSK) are proposed for coding and decoding information of the so-called messenger molecule concentration waves in nanonetworks. The first technique, CSK, modulates the information via the variation in the concentration of the messenger molecules whereas MoSK utilizes different types of messenger molecules to represent the information. Using simulation, the performance of these modulation techniques is evaluated in terms of susceptibility to noise and transmission power requirements. The new techniques achieve high channel capacity values, in particular, the MoSK technique exhibits more robustness against noise and requires less power.

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In diffusion-based molecular communication, information transport is governed by diffusion through a fluid medium. The achievable data rates for these channels are very low compared to the radio-based communication system, since diffusion can be a slow process. To improve the data rate, a novel multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) design for molecular communication is proposed that utilizes multiple molecular emitters at the transmitter and multiple molecular detectors at the receiver (in RF communication these all correspond to antennas). Using particle-based simulators, the channel's impulse response is obtained and mathematically modeled. These models are then used to determine inter-link interference (ILI) and inter-symbol interference (ISI). It is assumed that when the receiver has incomplete information regarding the system and the channel state, low complexity symbol detection methods are preferred since the receiver is small and simple. Thus four detection algorithms are proposed---adaptive thresholding, practical zero forcing with channel models excluding/including the ILI and ISI, and Genie-aided zero forcing. The proposed algorithms are evaluated extensively using numerical and analytical evaluations