Droplet Routing Based on Double Deep Q-Network Algorithm for Digital Microfluidic Biochips

Digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs) are emerging as an alternative to the cumbersome traditional laboratories for biochemical analysis. DMFBs come under micro-electro-mechanical systems and are a class of lab-on-a-chip devices. DMFBs provide automation, miniaturization and software programmability. The droplet routing algorithm determines concurrent routes for a set of droplets from their source cells to individual target cells on a DMFB. In this paper, a double deep Q-network (DDQN)-based droplet routing algorithm has been proposed. DDQN is a temporal difference-based deep reinforcement algorithm that combines Double Q-learning with a deep neural network algorithm. In the proposed work, routes for droplets are determined by DDQN, and later collisions are resolved using stalling and/or detouring. The latest arrival time of droplets arriving last at its target and cell utilization is taken as objectives for routing algorithm performance evaluation. The proposed method is evaluated on two standard benchmark suites. Simulation results show that the proposed DDQN-based droplet routing algorithm produces competitive results compared to state-of-the-art algorithms.