Single frequency wireless power transfer and full-duplex communication system for intracranial epilepsy monitoring

Current clinical neural recording methods which employ wired connections to the external world can be improved by eliminating the wires thanks to integrated circuit and microsystems technology. This study presents design and implementation of such a system which performs wireless power transfer and data transmission for intracranial epilepsy monitoring. Proposed system provides power to the implant by inductive coupling. Full-duplex communication is also performed at the same frequency as the power transfer. Consequently, a system which can transfer power from 10 mm distance with 30% efficiency has been realized. The system supports 400 kbps uplink communication while downlink communication is performed with 1 kbps at the same time. Design challenges for uplink communication in terms of energy-per-bit and interaction between uplink and downlink communication have been discussed in detail to give an insight about the design trade-offs for a full-duplex communication system superposed on a wireless power transfer link.