Transmitter and Receiver Architectures for Molecular Communications: A Survey on Physical Design With Modulation, Coding, and Detection Techniques This article focuses on the design of transmitters and receivers for molecular communication (MC). It also reviews existing literature on transmitter and receiver architectures for realizing MC, including both nanomaterial-based nanomachines and/or biological entities. By MURAT KUSCU , Student Member IEEE,ERGIN DINC , Member IEEE, BILGESU A. BILGIN , Member IEEE,HAMIDEH RAMEZANI , Student Member IEEE, AND OZGUR B. AKAN , Fellow IEEE ABSTRACT | Inspired by nature, molecular communications (MC), i.e., the use of molecules to encode, transmit, and receive information, stands as the most promising communica- tion paradigm to realize the nanonetworks. Even though there has been extensive theoretical research toward nanoscale MC, there are no examples of implemented nanoscale MC networks. The main reason for this lies in the peculiarities of nanoscale physics, challenges in nanoscale fabrication, and highly stochastic nature of the biochemical domain of envisioned nanonetwork applications. This mandates develop- Manuscript received November 5, 2018; revised March 13, 2019; accepted April 30, 2019. Date of publication May 30, 2019; date of current version July 19, 2019. This work was supported in part by the European Research Council (ERC) Projects MINERVA under Grant ERC-2013-CoG #616922 and MINERGRACE under Grant ERC-2017-PoC #780645. (Corresponding author: Murat Kuscu.) M. Kuscu, E. Dinc, B. A. Bilgin, and H. Ramezani are with the Electrical Engineering Division, Internet of Everything (IoE) Group, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0FA, U.K. (e-mail: mk959@cam.ac.uk; ed502@cam.ac.uk; bab46@cam.ac.uk; hr404@cam.ac.uk). O. B. Akan is with the Electrical Engineering Division, Internet of Everything (IoE) Group, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0FA, U.K., and also with the Next-generation and Wireless Communications Laboratory (NWCL), Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Koc University, 34450 Istanbul, Turkey (e-mail: oba21@cam.ac.uk). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JPROC.2019.2916081 ing novel device architectures and communication methods compatible with MC constraints. To that end, various transmit- ter and receiver designs for MC have been proposed in the literature together with numerable modulation, coding, and detection techniques. However, these works fall into domains of a very wide spectrum of disciplines, including, but not limited to, information and communication theory, quantum physics, materials science, nanofabrication, physiology, and synthetic biology. Therefore, we believe it is imperative for the progress of the field that an organized exposition of cumulative knowledge on the subject matter can be compiled. Thus, to fill this gap, in this comprehensive survey, we review the existing literature on transmitter and receiver architectures toward realizing MC among nanomaterial-based nanomachines and/or biological entities and provide a complete overview of mod- ulation, coding, and detection techniques employed for MC. Moreover, we identify the most significant shortcomings and challenges in all these research areas and propose potential solutions to overcome some of them. KEYWORDS | Coding; detection; Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT); modulation; molecular communications (MCs); nanonetworks; receiver; transmitter. 1302 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE | Vol. 107, No. 7, July 2019 0018-9219 © 2019 IEEE. Translations and content mining are permitted for academic research only. Personal use is also permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.