Levenberg–Marquardt Method-Based Cooperative Source Localization in SIMO Molecular Communication via Diffusion Systems

Molecular communication underpins nano-scale communications in nanotechnology. The combination of multi-nanomachines to form nano-networks is one of the main enabling methods. Due to the importance of source localization in establishing nano-networks, this paper proposes a cooperative source localization method for Molecular Communication via Diffusion (MCvD) systems using multiple spherical absorption receivers. Since there is no exact mathematical expression of the channel impulse response for multiple absorbing receivers, we adopt an empirical expression and use Levenberg-Marquardt method to estimate the distance of the transmitter to each receiver, based on which the location of the transmitter is obtained using an iterative scheme where the initial point is obtained using a multi-point localization method. Particle based simulation is carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Simulation results show that the proposed method can accurately estimate the location of transmitter in short to medium communication ranges.