Compact and tissue-insensitive implantable antenna on magneto-dielectric substrate for wireless biotelemetry

Abstract

A novel implantable antenna, which is compact and insensitive to the implant locations in the human body, is proposed for wireless biotelemetry in the medical device radio communications (MedRadio) service frequency band (401–406 MHz). By adopting a magneto-dielectric material as an antenna substrate, the proposed antenna can be minimized and the bandwidth of the antenna is expected to be widened enough to perform in the various implant locations within the MedRadio band. The potential of the proposed antenna aimed at biotelemetry applications was verified through simulations and measurements with a 2/3 human muscle-emulating block. The designed antenna is 20 mm × 10 mm × 1.275 mm in volume and shows the bandwidth (return loss of 10 dB) of 22.65 MHz and the maximum gain of −32 dBi at 402 MHz, which are quite competitive for the wireless biotelemetry applications.

KEYWORDS:

• Biotelemetry
• implantable antenna
• magneto-dielectric material
• MedRadio
• and MICS

ORCID

Jae-Ho Lee http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6878-8848

Dong-Wook Seo http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9449-7772

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (Ministry of Science and ICT; MSIT) (No. 2018R1C1B6003854).

Notes on contributors

Jae-Ho Lee

Jae-Ho Lee was born in Daegu, Korea, on 1 March 1974. He received his BS degree in electronic and electrical engineering from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Rep. of Korea, in 2002, and his MS degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejon, Rep. of Korea, in 2004. He was awarded his PhD degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT), Tokyo, Japan, in 2010. From 2004 to 2005, he worked at the Mobile Communication PM team of Institute of Information and Technology Assessment (IITA), Daejeon, Korea. He also worked for the Radar Research Center at Samsung Thales, Yongin, Rep. of Korea, from 2010 to 2012. Since 2013, he has been a senior researcher with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Daegu, Rep. of Korea. His research interests include waveguide arrays, electromagnetic numerical analysis, biomedical implantable devices, automotive radar system, and antennas.

Dong-Wook Seo

Dong-Wook Seo received his BS degree in electrical engineering from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Rep. of Korea, in 2003 and his MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Rep. of Korea, in 2005 and 2011, respectively. He was a senior researcher for the Defense Agency for Technology and Quality, Daegu, Rep. of Korea, from 2011 to 2012. From 2012 to 2017, he was a senior researcher at ETRI, Daegu, Rep. of Korea. Since Sep. 2017, he has been with the Department of Radio Communication Engineering, Korea Maritime and Ocean University (KMOU), Busan, Korea, as an Assistant Professor. His current research interests include numerical techniques in the areas of electromagnetics, radar cross-section analysis, wireless power transfer, biomedical implantable devices, and automotive radar systems.