A mm-Sized Wirelessly Powered and Remotely Controlled Locomotive Implant

• Published in: IEEE transactions on biomedical circuits and systems 2012-12, Vol.6 (6), p.523-532
• Main Authors: Pivonka, D., Yakovlev, A., Poon, A. S. Y., Meng, T.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biomedical Engineering - instrumentation; Biomedical telemetry; Drug delivery; Drug Delivery Systems - instrumentation; Electric Power Supplies; Equipment Design; Humans; Hydrodynamics; Implantable biomedical devices; low power; Magnetic Phenomena; Magnetohydrodynamics; micro-scale fluid propulsion; Motion; noninvasive; Prostheses and Implants; Telemetry - instrumentation; Wireless communication; wireless health monitoring; wireless powering; Wireless Technology
• ISSN: 1932-4545; 1940-9990
• DOI: 10.1109/TBCAS.2012.2232665

A wirelessly powered and controlled implantable device capable of locomotion in a fluid medium is presented. Two scalable low-power propulsion methods are described that achieve roughly an order of magnitude better performance than existing methods in terms of thrust conversion efficiency. The wireless prototype occupies 0.6 mm × 1 mm in 65 nm CMOS with an external 2 mm × 2 mm receive antenna. The IC consists of a matching network, a rectifier, a bandgap reference, a regulator, a demodulator, a digital controller, and high-current drivers that interface directly with the propulsion system. It receives 500 μW from a 2 W 1.86 GHz power signal at a distance of 5 cm. Asynchronous pulse-width modulation on the carrier allows for data rates from 2.5-25 Mbps with energy efficiency of 0.5 pJ/b at 10 Mbps. The received data configures the propulsion system drivers, which are capable of driving up to 2 mA at 0.2 V and can achieve speed of 0.53 cm/sec in a 0.06 T magnetic field.