Tissue-Independent Implantable Antenna for In-Body Communications at 2.36–2.5 GHz

Abstract

Abstract-In this paper, a compact printed meandered folded dipole antenna with a volume of 114 mm 3 suitable for implantation in a range of different body tissue types with diverse electrical properties is presented for operation in the 2.36 -2.4 GHz MBAN and 2.4 GHz ISM bands. Its performance was verified and compared against that of a wire dipole and slot loaded monopole antenna in an implant phantom testbed containing tissue equivalent liquids representing body tissues with high and low water content. The antenna was shown to maintain its return loss performance in the 2360 -2400 MHz, 2400 -2483.5 MHz and 2483.5 -2500 MHz frequency bands with equivalent or better performance than a fundamental wire dipole despite having approximately half the physical length.Index Terms-medical body area network, implantable medical devices, implantable antenna, body phantom

Measurement of Deep Tissue Implanted Antenna Efficiency Using a Reverberation Chamber

“…The insulated AUTs were a Printed Folded Meandered Dipole (PFMD) and a Slot Loaded Monopole (SLM) as presented in [32]. The PFMD is an inherently robust tissueindependent design with relatively small volume.…”

“…The insulated SLM and the un-insulated SD are most affected by the feed cable arrangements. This effect is less apparent in the case of the PFMD which is most likely due to the integrated balun that is incorporated in that design [32].…”

“…The PFMD was the most representative of a practical design and even though it has an integral balun [32], the results in Fig. 4 still show considerable cable effect, which diminishes as the tissue equivalent liquid level is increased.…”

Experimental Investigation of Non-Line-of-Sight Channels in an Intra-Body Network at 2.38 GHz

“…The same outer cylinder is used in both setups (244 mm inner diameter, 2 mm thickness) and is wrapped by a double layer of solid skinmimicking material, 2 mm thick. The material is described in [6]. The difference between the two phantoms is the diameter of the inner glass cylinder.…”

“…Insulated printed folded meandered dipole (PFMD) antennas were used in this work due to their compact size and robustness across different tissue types without re-tuning [6]. The antennas were always fully immersed inside the tissue equivalent liquid at exactly the center of the phantoms vertical height.…”