Ultrasound Energy and Data Transfer for Medical Implants

This book presents new systems and circuits for implantable biomedical applications, using a non-conventional way to transmit energy and data via ultrasound.  The authors discuses the main constrains (e.g. implant size, battery recharge time, data rate, accuracy of the acoustic models) from the definition of the ultrasound system specification to the in-vitro validation.The system described meets the safety requirements for ultrasound exposure limits in diagnostic ultrasound applications, according to FDA regulations.  Readers will see how the novel design of power management architecture will meet the constraints set by FDA regulations for maximum energy exposure in the human body.  Coverage also includes the choice of the acoustic transducer, driven by optimum positioning and size of the implanted medical device. Throughout the book, links between physics, electronics and medical aspects are covered to give a complete view of the ultrasound system described.

• Provides a complete, system-level perspective on the use of ultrasound as energy source for medical implants;
• Discusses system design concerns regarding wireless power transmission and wireless data communication, particularly for a system in which both are performed on the same channel/frequency;
• Describes an experimental study on implantable battery powered biomedical systems;
• Presents a fully-integrated, implantable system and hermetically sealed packaging.

Franceco Mazzilli was born in Turin, Italy, in 1983. He received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Turin, Turin, Italy, in 2005, the M.Sc. degree in micro- and nano-technologies for integrated systems, issued jointly from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, Grenoble, France, and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2007, and the Ph.D. degree in microsystems and microelectronics from EPFL in 2013. In March 2008, he joined the Electronics Lab at EPFL as a Research Assistant in the field of RFIC design. His research interests include analog and RF CMOS circuit design for power management, wireless systems, and MEMS/NEMS applications. He is an analog design engineer at Melexis Technologies SA in Chemin Bevaix, Switzerland.

Catherine Dehollain received the Master Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1982 from EPFL. Then, sheworked in Geneva up to 1990 as a Senior Design Engineer in telecommunications at the Europeanresearch center of Motorola. From 1990 up to 1995, shedidher PhD thesis at the Chaire des Circuits et Systemes at EPFL in the domain of impedancebroadbandmatching circuits. Since 1995, sheisresponsible at EPFL for the RFIC group. She has participated to differentSwissresearchprojects as well as European projectsdedicated to data communication of sensorsnodes (e.g. MuMoR, Minami Europeanprojects) as well as remotepowering of sensornodes. Her main domains of interest are telecom applications (e.g. Impulse radio Ultra-Wide Band, super-regenerative receivers, RFIDs)as well as biomedical applications. She has been the coordinator of Europeanprojects (e.g. FP6 SUPREGE, FP7 Ultrasponder)and of Swissprojects (e.g. CAPED CTI project, NEURO-IC SNF project).