Development of a High-Speed Implant Communication Module Deep Into the Human Body: Realized in the 10-60-MHz band with small antennas [Bioelectromagnetics]

摘要

Implant sensors and robots are expected to sense biological information or images. They stay in the human body for a long time to make a diagnosis or move freely inside the body to perform remote treatment, such as excision of the affected area or drug injection. In this study, toward the aforementioned purpose, we developed a communication module with small antennas that use the 10-60-MHz band to enable high-speed implant communication to the deep part of the human body. A waveform equalization technique was also used to increase the transmission bandwidth limited by the small antennas and reduce the sizes of their implementation. As a result, an implant communication distance of 33 cm or more that can cover the entire human torso was achieved at a data rate of 20 Mb/s. Experimental results on a living swine also showed that the developed module is able to communicate deeper in the human body than all others reported in the literature at sufficiently high data rates. This article describes the development of the implant communication module and shows the current status of research by comparing its performance with others reported in the literature.