Implantable Devices: Issues and Challenges

Abstract

Ageing population and a multitude of neurological and cardiovascular illnesses that cannot be mitigated by medication alone have resulted in a significant growth in the number of patients that require implantable electronic devices. These range from sensors, gastric and cardiac pacemakers, cardioverter defibrillators, to deep brain, nerve, and bone stimulators. Long-term implants present specific engineering challenges, including low energy consumption and stable performance. Resorbable electronics may offer excellent short-term performance without the need for surgical removal. However, most electronic materials have poor bio-and cytocompatibility, resulting in immune reactions and infections. This paper reviews the current situation and highlights challenges for future advancements.

Nano-engineered architectures for ultra-low power wireless body sensor nodes

“…The required interconnection density is provided by monolithic 3D integration in an area-efficient manner vs. state-ofthe-art TSVs [Shulaker15]. The footprint area benefits of our approach greatly enhances implantability of such health monitoring systems [Bazaka12]. The footprint area benefit is even greater when compared to a traditional system with off-chip NVM connected using either a silicon interposer or through board-level integration.…”

HACMAC: A reliable human activity-based medium access control for implantable body sensor networks

“…Energy-efficient medical sensors and devices, both wearable and implantable, are suitable for this purpose. However the therapeutic applications of these devices are still limited due to the inter-disciplinary challenges from different aspects such as bio-compatibility, size, chip design, and wireless communication [5] [6]. A network of these implantable medical devices is called the implantable body sensor networks (IBSN).…”

Compact helical antenna for smart implant applications

“…ISM frequencies of 2.4 GHz or even 5.8 GHz are typically chosen for in-body implants as a compromise between small antenna size (higher frequencies are beneficial) and acceptable penetration through human body tissues (lower frequencies are beneficial). [14][15][16] A standard dipole antenna operating at 5.8 GHz would have a nominal length of 25.8 mm, which can be reduced by embedding it into a high-k dielectric matrix. 17 When integrated on chip, modern antennas, although as small as 2 × 1.5 mm 2 , require specially designed ground planes and metallization-free regions, which result in a total area occupied by the complete antenna element of at least 4 × 3 mm 2 , 18 (typically, commercial antenna realizations consume a few square centimeters).…”