Performance of miniature implantable antennas for medical telemetry at 402, 433, 868 and 915 MHz

Abstract

In this paper, we compare the performance of implantable antennas for integration into implantable medical devices and telemetry in the MICS (402.0-405.0 MHz) and ISM (433.1-434.8, 868.0-868.6 and 902.8-928.0 MHz) bands. A parametric model of a miniature (volume of 32.7 mm3) patch antenna is proposed for skin-implantation, and further refined for each frequency set-up. Implantation inside canonical models of the human head, arm and trunk is considered, and the antenna resonance, radiation and safety performance is compared. Results indicate enhanced bandwidth and improved radiation and safety performance at higher frequencies because of the increased copper surface area. Implantation of a specific antenna inside different parts of the human body is shown to insignificantly affect its performance. © Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2013.