Design of Wireless Links to Implanted Brain–Machine Interface Microelectronic Systems

Author

Bjorninen, Toni ; Muller, Rudolf ; Ledochowitsch, Peter ; Sydanheimo, Lauri ; Ukkonen, Leena ; Maharbiz, Michel M. ; Rabaey, Jan M.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. & Commun. Eng., Tampere Univ. of Technol., Tampere, Finland

Volume

11

fYear

2012

fDate

7/4/1905 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1663

Lastpage

1666

Abstract

This letter presents a monolithic integration of an antenna with an array of neural recording electrodes on a flexible thin film. The structure was designed for long-term neural recording in a wireless brain-machine interface system. The implant-on-body antenna pair is optimized for maximal link power efficiency to maximize the battery life of a portable outside-body control unit. We provide guidelines for the design of the sub-skin-depth implant antenna and validate the antenna simulation model with wireless link measurements in air. We propose a new computational analysis of both the power and voltage delivery to the battery-free implant under design variations to guarantee efficient on-chip RF-to-dc conversion.

Keywords

antennas; bioelectric potentials; biomedical electronics; brain-computer interfaces; electrodes; prosthetics; battery-free implant; flexible thin film; implant-on-body antenna pair; implanted brain-machine interface microelectronic system; maximal link power efficiency; monolithic integration; neural recording electrode; on-chip RF-to-DC conversion; portable outside-body control unit; subskin-depth implant antenna; wireless brain-machine interface system; wireless links; Antenna measurements; Brain computer interfaces; Implantable biomedical devices; Implants; Microelectronic implants; Wireless communication; Electrocorticography (ECoG); implantable antenna; on-body antenna; thin conductor; wireless power delivery;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1536-1225

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LAWP.2013.2239252

Filename

6409382