Wireless power transmission in implantable

medical devices
Wireless power transfer (WPT), wireless energy transmission, or electromagnetic power transfer is the
transmission of electrical energy from a power source to an electrical load, such as an electrical power
grid or a consuming device, without the use of discrete human-made conductors. Wireless power is a
generic term that refers to a number of different power transmission technologies that use time-varying
electric, magnetic, or electromagnetic fields. In wireless power transfer, a wireless transmitter
connected to a power source conveys the field energy across an intervening space to one or more
receivers, where it is converted back to an electrical current and then used. Wireless transmission is
useful to power electrical devices in cases where interconnecting wires are inconvenient, hazardous, or
are not possible.

Wireless power techniques mainly fall into two categories, non-radiative and radiative. In near field or
non-radiative techniques, power is transferred by magnetic fields using inductive coupling between coils
of wire, or by electric fields using capacitive coupling between metal electrodes. Inductive coupling is
the most widely used wireless technology; its applications include electric toothbrush chargers, RFID
tags, smartcards, and chargers for implantable medical devices like artificial cardiac pacemakers, and
inductive powering or charging of electric vehicles like trains or buses. A current focus is to develop
wireless systems to charge mobile and handheld computing devices such as cellphones, digital music
players and portable computers without being tethered to a wall plug.

In far-field or radiative techniques, also called power beaming, power is transferred by electromagnetic
radiation, such as microwaves or laser beams. These techniques can transport energy longer distances
but must be aimed at the receiver. Proposed applications of this type are solar power satellites, and
drone aircraft.[1][2][3]
1 General principle of wireless power transmission and its applications in implantable medical
devices
Y. Ben Fadhel et al. (2016)
Wireless power transmission (WPT) has caused a radical change in the medical field, especially
for medical implants. In this paper, a review of wireless power transmission history is given, its
basic principle and it's very important role to load various medical implants such as cardiac,
visual, gastric and endoscopic implants. The basic design of the WPT for each implant was been
presented. This paper also outlines the safety consideration for human exposure to
electromagnetic field.

2
A Hybrid Inductive-Ultrasonic Link for Wireless Power Transmission to Millimeter-Sized
Biomedical Implants
Miao Meng et al. (2016)
Ultrasound has recently been utilized for efficient wireless power transmission (WPT) to
biomedical implants with millimeter (mm) dimensions and below. However, the power
transmission efficiency (PTE) of ultrasonic links reduces significantly in mediums with different
acoustic impedances. This paper presents a hybrid inductive-ultrasonic WPT link for powering
mm-sized implants that utilizes two cascaded co-optimized inductive and ultrasonic links for
WPT through bone/air and tissue, respectively. The ultrasonic link is first optimized based on
the implant depth (dus) and load (RL) to find the optimal geometries for ultrasonic transducers
and operation frequency (fp). Then, the inductive link is optimized at fp to drive the transmitter
(Tx) transducer. A hybrid link was optimized and measured to transfer power to a receiver (Rx)
transducer with the diameter of 1.1 mm, loaded by RL of 2.5 kΩ and located at dus = 3 cm inside
castor oil, as the tissue model. The Tx coil was placed in air and spaced from the Rx coil by 3 cm,
resulting in a total powering distance (d) of 6 cm. At the optimal fp of 1.1 MHz, the hybrid link
achieved a considerable measured PTE of 0.16%.

3 Optimal resonance configuration for ultrasonic wireless power transmission to millimeter-sized

biomedical implants
Miao Meng et al. (2016)
In order to achieve efficient wireless power transmission (WPT) to biomedical implants with
millimeter (mm) dimensions, ultrasonic WPT links have recently been proposed. Operating both
 transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) ultrasonic transducers at their resonance frequency (fr) is key
in improving power transmission efficiency (PTE). In this paper, different resonance
configurations for Tx and Rx transducers, including series and parallel resonance, have been
studied to help the designers of ultrasonic WPT links to choose the optimal resonance
configuration for Tx and Rx that maximizes PTE. The geometries for disk-shaped transducers of
four different sets of links, operating at series-series, series-parallel, parallel-series, and parallel-
parallel resonance configurations in Tx and Rx, have been found through finite-element method
(FEM) simulation tools for operation at fr of 1.4 MHz. Our simulation results suggest that
operating the Tx transducer with parallel resonance increases PTE, while the resonance
configuration of the mm-sized Rx transducer highly depends on the load resistance, Rl. For
applications that involve large Rl in the order of tens of kΩ, a parallel resonance for a mm-sized
Rx leads to higher PTE, while series resonance is preferred for Rl in the order of several kΩ and
below.

4 A Real-Time Electrically Controlled Active Matching Circuit Utilizing Genetic Algorithms for
Wireless Power Transfer to Biomedical Implants
Jo Bito (2016)
This paper discusses the feasibility of a real-time active matching circuit (MC) for wireless power
transfer applications, especially for biomedical systems. One prototype of low-cost real-time
automatic MC, utilizing a variable circuit topology, including discrete passives and p-i-n diodes,
has been implemented and the principle has been verified by measurements. One genetic
algorithm was introduced to optimize the design over a wide range of impedances to match. As
a result of preliminary operation verification tests, the proposed real-time MC system results in
improving the transfer coefficient in the range of 10-16-cm coil separation distance a maximum
of 3.2 dB automatically in about 64 ms. Similar performance improvement results were
observed in additional tests under misaligned conditions, as well as for nonsymmetrical Tx-Rx
coil configurations further verifying the potential applicability of the proposed system to
practical biomedical devices.