Galvanic Coupling Enabling Wireless Implant Communications

Marc Simon Wegmueller, Sonja Huclova, Juerg Froehlich, Michael Oberle, Norbert Felber, Niels Kuster, Wolfgang Fichtner, in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Volume 58, Issue 8, pp. 2618– 2625, August 2009, online July 7.

Galvanic coupling, which has been shown to be an excellent method for low-power on-body data transmission, is extended toward wireless communication between implanted devices, building an intrabody sensor network. A test system was been developed and implemented, and the measurements compared with numerical simulations. The prototype offers four concurrent channels with a throughput of 4.8 kb/s. The main focus is the future implantability of such a miniaturized system for the long-term medical surveillance of patients.

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