Resource Allocation for Max-Min Rate Fairness in Molecular Communication Systems

Molecular communication (MC) is considered to be a promising technology to realize the Internet of Nano Things (IoNT), especially the biomedical IoNT. In the construction of IoNT, communication between nano-machines is still an important topic, where multiple-access MC is imperative to be studied due to the multiple nano-machine clusters in IoNT. In this paper, a novel multi-user MC system based on the molecular division multiple access technology is proposed, where information molecules with different diffusion coefficients are first employed. Moreover, we employ the max-min rate fairness as a criterion to investigate the optimization of molecular resource allocation, including the assignment for types of molecules and the number of associated molecules. Two assignment strategies for types of molecules, i.e., best-to-best (BTB) and best-to-worst (BTW), are proposed. Subsequently, we analytically deduce the optimal allocation for the number of molecules when types of molecules are fixed for all users. Finally, numerical results show that the combination of BTW and the optimal allocation for the number of molecules exhibits the best performance.