A Fully Wireless and Batteryless Localization System With 50 Micrometre Motion Detection Capability and Adaptive Transmitter Power Control for Point-of-Care Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Localization has varied applications in biomedicine, such as wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE), detection of cancerous tissue, drug delivery, robotic surgeries, and brain mapping. Currently, most localization systems are battery-powered and suffer from issues regarding battery leakage and limited battery life, resulting in potential health hazards and inconveniences when using them for continuous health monitoring applications. This paper proposes an entirely wireless and battery-less 2D localization system consisting of an integrated circuit (IC) that is wirelessly powered at a distance of 4 cm by a 40.68 MHz radio frequency (RF) power of only 2 W. The proposed localization system wirelessly transmits a locked sub-harmonic 13.56 MHz signal generated from the wirelessly received 40.68 MHz RF power signal, eliminating the need for a power-hungry oscillator. Additionally, the system, having a measurement latency of 11.3 ms, has also been verified to sense motion as small as 50 µm as well as measure the rate of motion up to 10 beats per minute, therefore extending its application to the detection of physiological motions such as diaphragm motion during breathing. The localizer has a small form factor of 17 mm × 12 mm × 0.2 mm and consumes an average power of 6 µW. Ex vivo measurements using the localizer inside the porcine intestine demonstrate a localization accuracy of less than 5 mm.