Live demonstration: Inductive power and telemetry for micro-implant

A prototype for a wireless implantable sensor system is demonstrated intended for a pill sized micro-implant for blood sugar monitoring. Power is sent and telemetry data received over a near field inductive link. The implant system is almost completely realized on a single CMOS ASIC, excepting three surface mounted capacitors, the coil antenna and the sensor. For this demonstration, the ASIC is packaged and mounted with the 4 other components on a PCB, and the glucose sensor is substituted with either a potentiometer or an atmospheric pressure sensor. In the targeted highly miniaturized implantable micro system all components (including antenna and sensor) will be integrated into a pill sized LTCC (low temperature cofired ceramics) package. The total implant power budget with the minimal supply voltage of 2.5V is at 76μW. This number includes the power for various test structures that will be unnecessary for an industrial prototype, which is expected to operate below 20μW. A simple demonstrator of the reader is implemented on another PCB with a two digit hexadecimal LED display to show the telemetry data.