Throughput and energy efficiency‐based packet size optimisation of ARQ protocols in bacterial quorum communications

The discovery that bacteria use signalling molecules, which are released into the environment, to communicate with each other changed our general perception of organisms inhabiting the world. Nowadays, the term quorum sensing is used to describe the phenomenon whereby a coordinated population response is controlled by exchanging specific diffusible chemical signals called autoinducers, enabling a cluster of bacteria to regulate their gene expression and behaviour collectively and synchronously. Bacteria assess their own population and coordinate their actions through the synthesis, accumulation and subsequent sensing of autoinducers. In this work, a bacterial quorum communication system is introduced, which contains two clusters of bacteria, specifically Vibrio fischeri , a gram‐negative marine bacterium, as the transmitter node and receiver node, and the diffusive channel. The transmitted information is encoded into the concentration of autoinducers, with binary representation, and then, it is divided into frames for transmission. Automatic Repeat reQuest protocols are applied to achieve better reliability. In addition, this paper addresses the question of optimal frame size for data communication in this channel capacity and energy constrained bacterial quorum communication system. The optimal fixed frame length is determined for a set of channel parameters by maximising the throughput and energy efficiency matrix. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.