Shared wireless link co-design for implantable device with far-field wireless power transfer

Abstract

Implantable devices are nowadays commonly used in medicine. However, these devices run mostly on batteries, leading to a finite lifetime due to the required battery replacement. Since wireless power is almost available everywhere, a suitable way to avoid battery replacement would be to recharge them wirelessly using wireless power transfer. As these implantable devices mostly feature a single antenna, it must be shared to communicate and to receive power. In this way, a circuit that turns off the communication blocks and other circuits while recharging is needed. In this paper, an RF CMOS frontend with far-field wireless powering for implantable devices with a power management module will be presented. This circuit is able to control the front-end circuits when the battery reaches predefined operating voltages.