Diffusive molecular communication (MC) is a promising strategy for the transfer of information in synthetic networks at the nanoscale. If such devices could communicate, then it would expand their cumulative capacity and potentially enable applications such as cooperative diagnostics in medicine, bottom-up fabrication in manufacturing, and sensitive environmental monitoring. Diffusion-based MC relies on the random motion of information molecules due to collisions with other molecules.

This dissertation presents a novel system model for three-dimensional diffusive MC where molecules can also be carried by steady uniform flow or participate in chemical reactions. The expected channel impulse response due to a point source of molecules is derived and its statistics are studied. The mutual information between consecutive observations at the receiver is also derived. A simulation framework that accommodates the details of the system model is introduced.

A joint estimation problem is formulated for the underlying system model parameters. The Cramer-Rao lower bound on the variance of estimation error is derived. Maximum likelihood estimation is considered and shown to be better than the Cramer-Rao lower bound when it is biased. Peak-based estimators are proposed for the low-complexity estimation of any single channel parameter. Optimal and suboptimal receiver design is considered for detecting the transmission of ON/OFF keying impulses.

Optimal joint detection provides a bound on detector performance. The weighted sum detector is proposed as a suboptimal alternative that is more physically realizable. The performance of a weighted sum detector can become comparable to that of the optimal detector when the environment has a mechanism to reduce intersymbol interference.

A model for noise sources that continuously release molecules is studied. The time-varying and asymptotic impact of such sources is derived. The model for asymptotic noise is used to approximate the impact of multiuser interference and also the impact of older bits of intersymbol interference.