Circuit-Level Modeling and Simulation of Wireless Sensing and Energy Harvesting With Hybrid Magnetoelectric Antennas for Implantable Neural Devices.

A magnetoelectric antenna (ME) can exhibit the dual capabilities of wireless energy harvesting and sensing at different frequencies. In this article, a behavioral circuit model for hybrid ME antennas is described to emulate the radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting and sensing operations during circuit simulations. The ME antenna of this work is interfaced with a CMOS energy harvester chip towards the goal of developing a wireless communication link for fully integrated implantable devices. One role of the integrated system is to receive pulse-modulated power from a nearby transmitter, and another role is to sense and transmit low-magnitude neural signals. The measurements reported in this paper are the first results that demonstrate simultaneous low-frequency wireless magnetic sensing and high-frequency wireless energy harvesting at two different frequencies with one dual-mode ME antenna. The proposed behavioral ME antenna model can be utilized during design optimizations of energy harvesting circuits. Measurements were performed to validate the wireless power transfer link with an ME antenna having a 2.57 GHz resonance frequency connected to an energy harvester chip designed in 65nm CMOS technology. Furthermore, this dual-mode ME antenna enables concurrent sensing using a carrier signal with a frequency that matches the second 63.63 MHz resonance mode. A wireless test platform has been developed for evaluation of ME antennas as a tool for neural implant design, and this prototype system was utilized to provide first experimental results with the transmission of magnetically modulated action potential waveforms.

A 30% Efficient High-Output Voltage Fully Integrated Self-Biased Gate RF Rectifier Topology for Neural Implants.

This paper presents a fully integrated RF energy harvester (EH) with 30% end-to-end power harvesting efficiency (PHE) and supports high output voltage operation, up to 9.3V, with a 1.07 GHz input and under the electrode model for neural applications. The EH is composed of a novel 10-stage self-biased gate (SBG) rectifier with an on-chip matching network. The SBG topology elevates the gate-bias of transistors in a non-linear manner to enable higher conductivity. The design also achieves >20% PHE range of 12-dB. The design was fabricated in 65 nm CMOS technology and occupies an area of 0.0732-mm2 with on-chip matching network. In addition to standalone EH characterization measurement results, animal tissue stimulation test was performed to evaluate its performance in a realistic neural implant application.

Ultra-compact dual-band smart NEMS magnetoelectric antennas for simultaneous wireless energy harvesting and magnetic field sensing.

Ultra-compact wireless implantable medical devices are in great demand for healthcare applications, in particular for neural recording and stimulation. Current implantable technologies based on miniaturized micro-coils suffer from low wireless power transfer efficiency (PTE) and are not always compliant with the specific absorption rate imposed by the Federal Communications Commission. Moreover, current implantable devices are reliant on differential recording of voltage or current across space and require direct contact between electrode and tissue. Here, we show an ultra-compact dual-band smart nanoelectromechanical systems magnetoelectric (ME) antenna with a size of 250 × 174 µm2 that can efficiently perform wireless energy harvesting and sense ultra-small magnetic fields. The proposed ME antenna has a wireless PTE 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than any other reported miniaturized micro-coil, allowing the wireless IMDs to be compliant with the SAR limit. Furthermore, the antenna's magnetic field detectivity of 300-500 pT allows the IMDs to record neural magnetic fields.