Molecular Communication for Plaque Sensing in a Vascular Bifurcation with Receiver Constraints

Abstract

Future molecular communication (MC) networks are envisioned to use the human cardiovascular system as a channel. Disease-related changes affect particle transport, allowing an MC receiver to also act as a sensor. In this work, we investigate plaque formation in a carotid bifurcation through a systematic fluid-dynamics simulation study with non-Newtonian blood rheology. We analyze how plaque geometry changes branch-specific particle reception and timing, and use these observations to estimate plaque-induced channel obstruction. At an illustrative reference of only 128 emitted particles, a 250 ms observation window and 50 ms temporal resolution, a Ridge detector estimates maximum local channel-width reduction with a mean absolute error of 8.30 percentage points. We evaluate robustness across system constraints like particle budgets, observation windows, branch access, detection efficiency, count resolution, and synchronization. Coarse counting has little effect when timing features remain available, whereas limited temporal resolution and clock uncertainty substantially affect short-window estimates. Extending the observation window to 1 s reduces these timing-related penalties. The results establish a baseline for plaque sensing from constrained MC observations and identify receiver capabilities relevant to the Internet of Bio-Nano Things.