TECHNOLOGY FORCES (Technol.

forces): Journal of Engineering and Sciences January-June 2010

Millimeterwave Patch Antenna Design for Medical Implants

Yasir Ahmed
yasir.ahmed@elec.qmul.ac.uk Queen Mary, University of London E14AH London, UK Keywords: Millimeterwave, Patch Antenna, Implant Abstract In this paper we present millimeterwave patch antenna designs for medical implants. The designs are based on the transmission line model and are simulated in CST. We first present a 31.5GHz patch antenna design based on a RT6002 substrate ( =2.94 ). The antenna has a small form factor and exhibits a high return loss and directivity. However, it does suffer from high attenuation loss and cannot be used for deep tissue implants. We next propose a 5.85 GHz design that is based on a super-high permittivity substrate ( = 80). This design retains the small size of the 31.5GHz antenna but greatly improves the link budget. This improvement can result in greater data bandwidth or higher penetration depth within the body. Link budget analysis has shown that even under the worst case scenario data rates of up to 51.43kbits/sec can be achieved over a 25kHz channel. for ultra-low-power, active, medical implants.

II ANTENNA DESIGN

At 402MHz the wavelength of an electromagnetic wave is about 0.75m. It is obvious that any antenna with dimensions comparable to this wavelength cannot be used for an implant. The technique usually used to overcome this problem is to design a conducting surface that is spiraled along the surface of the substrate. The resonant frequency of the microstrip is then proportional to the total length of the spiral and not to the length of any individual element. Although this results in a size reduction but its still not quite suitable for an implant (see table 2). We have investigated the idea of using a rectangular patch antenna designed to operate at millimeter wave frequencies ( l<10mm ). It has been observed that at millimeterwave most of the loss occurs within the first layer i.e. skin. There is relatively less loss within fat and at the dielectric boundaries [1]. It has also been observed that the attenuation loss increases exponentially with frequency. Hence it is desirable to perform equalization with a filter having the following frequency response

I - INTRODUCTION

he design of implanted antennas has received considerable attention from the research community. The design of these antennas is quite challenging, as there is a limit on the amount on power that can be transmitted as well as on the size of these devices. The limitation on the transmit power is due to the amount of battery power available as well as due to concerns about exposure to electromagnetic radiation. A number of different antenna designs have been considered for medical implants [1]-[4]. In [2] spiral and serpentine antenna designs have been considered and the authors have simulated the performance of these antennas using a single block of muscle and a realistic human shoulder. The results are also verified experimentally using a tissue simulant material composed of TX-151, sugar, salt and water. A similar analysis is performed in [3] for spiral and planar inverted-F (PIFA) antenna. However, the authors have primarily focused on the human brain using a six-layer model (brain, CSF, Dura, bone, fat and skin). In both these papers the authors have considered a frequency of 402-405 MHz that has been recommended by the European Radio Communications Committee (ERC)

where W is the upper limit of the band of interest. This technique would be especially useful for ultra-wideband (UWB) type of signals. However, this is not the subject of this paper and we will focus on narrowband designs that provide us sufficient bandwidth to communicate with the implant. A microstrip antenna can be designed using one of several models available in the literature. We have used the transmission line model since it is fairly simple to implement and results in antenna designs with reasonably good performance in terms of return loss and efficiency. It is also quite well suited to the rectangular designs that

1. Antennas and Electromagnetic Group at Queen Mary, University of London, London E14AH, UK. 2. COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Plot 30 Sector H8-1 Islamabad, Pakistan.

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TECHNOLOGY FORCES (Technol. forces): Journal of Engineering and Sciences January-June 2010

we have considered.

III - SIMULATION RESULTS

The antenna is placed within a three-layer body consisting of skin, fat and air and energized by a waveguide port with a normalized power of 1WF . We used air as the cavity around the antenna; however, in practice, some other non-conducting medium might be used.

where G is the receive antenna gain. This gives a received power of -106.95dBW or -76.95dBm. In the absence of the body the antenna has a power density 2 of -3.63dBW/m at a distance of 1m. Therefore there is a power loss of 53.87dB within the body. Similar results are obtained for the reverse link using ray-tracing where a 52.40dB loss is observed within the layers of skin and fat (Fig 3). However, it must be noted that, the wireless communication channel between an implant and an external device is not symmetric and the link budget in one direction might be quite different from that in the other direction.

Fig 1. Patch implanted inside the model (4mm Skin, 4mm Fat, 1mm cavity). Tissue Skin Fat Muscle Permittivity 5.85GHz 35.0720 4.9503 48.4180 31.5GHz 14.7980 3.5970 22.2700 Conductivity (S/m) 5.85GHz 3.7602 0.2964 5.0212 31.5GHz 27.9710 1.8636 36.8130 Fig 2. Return loss of the antenna with and without the body.

Table 1: Dielectric properties of human tissue at 5.85GHz and 31.5GHz. (a) 31.5GHz Design (er =2.94,tand=0.0012 ) For an isotropic radiator with a transmit power of 1W the power density at a distance of 1m is

and for the embedded patch with a gain of -46.5dB the power density would be reduced to

which is equal to the result obtained through p-field simulation (Fig 4). Now if the effective area Ae of the antenna is known then the received power Pr at a particular distance can be easily calculated. The effective area [7] of a half wave dipole is given as

Fig 3. Relative Electric field strength 20log10 (/E10l Eol) . External device to implant communication. Fig 5. P-field at 5.85GHz (a) H-plane (b) E-plane.

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TECHNOLOGY FORCES (Technol. forces): Journal of Engineering and Sciences January-June 2010

However, as expected, there is lesser attenuation within the body (10.50dB). It is observed that there is a gain of 25.10dB over the 31.5GHz patch antenna in the forward direction. The embedded patch has a return loss of more than 15dB and experiences a frequency detuning of less than 1%. The received power for a half wave dipole is 67.18dBW - .

IV-LINK BUDGET ANALYSIS

Let us consider the worst case scenario where the signal power is -76.90dBm. We keep an additional 10dB fade margin (ITU-R recommendations) giving us an average received power of -86.90dBm. The noise power can be calculated as N = kTB (5)

where k is the Boltzman constant, T is the equivalent noise temperature in degree Kelvin and B is the bandwidth in Hz. At a standard room temperature of 20C the noise power for a 25kHz channel is calculated as -129.95dBm. According to ITU-R recommendations a 20dB margin is added to account for other sources of interference resulting in a noise floor of -109.95dBm. This gives us a signal to noise ratio of approximately 23dB. If we take the SAR requirements into consideration then the signal to noise ratio is reduced to about 5dB. We can now calculate the capacity of the 25kHz channel as C = Blog2 (1=SNR) (6)

Fig 5. P-field at 5.85GHz (a) H-plane (b) E-plane. (b) 5.85 GHz Design ( er =80.0,tand=8.6x10 ) We next investigated the idea of using a super high permittivity (SHP) substrate that reduces the size of the patch at the expense of radiation efficiency. The material that we have used is ADT80 which was originally fabricated for hyperthermia applications [9]. It was found that with this substrate the patch dimensions at a frequency of 5.85GHz would be quite comparable to that of the 31.5GHz antenna with RT6002 as the substrate. Simulation results have shown that there are two basic drawbacks of using this technique. 1. The patch has very low radiation efficiency (13.96%). 2. The patch has low directivity (2.01dBi). Furthermore when implanted within the body the patch does not have a p-field maximum along the broadside.
-4

This gives us a theoretical maximum data rate of 51.43kbits/sec. It seems that this should be sufficient for most telemetering applications like exercise EEG diagnosis which requires 40kbps (4k sample rate and 10 bits resolution). It is quite obvious that any additional data sources can be accommodated by increasing the bandwidth of the channel or by improving the SNR.

V - CONCLUSION

The 31.5GHz patch design is quite attractive in terms of its size and radiation characteristics. However, the high attenuation loss within the body reduces the link budget and makes it unsuitable for deep tissue implants. The link budget can be greatly improved by using an SHP substrate. This improvement can result in greater data bandwidth or higher penetration depth within the body. It can also be used to reduce the transmit power to extremely low levels thus satisfying the most stringent SAR requirements. Finally, it must be noted that the return loss of the antenna increases inside the body and there is also some frequency detuning. Higher return loss is a desirable characteristic but frequency detuning is not and can be removed by adjusting the dimensions of the antenna such that the null occurs at the desired frequency.

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TECHNOLOGY FORCES (Technol. forces): Journal of Engineering and Sciences January-June 2010

Table 2. Comparison of six different antennas designed for medical implants. The size of our antenna is governed by the dimensions of the ground plane. REFERENCES [1] Y. Ahmed, Y. Hao and C. Pirini, A 31.5GHz Patch Antenna Design for Medical Implants, Special Issue of International Journal on Antennas and Propagation, Sep. 2008. [2] P. Soontornpipit, C. M. Furse, and Y. C. Chung, Design of Implantable Microstrip Antennas for Communication with Medical Implants, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 52, no. 8, pp.1944-1951, Aug. 2004. [3] J. Kim, and Y. R. Samii, Implanted Antennas Inside a Human Body: Simulations, Designs, and Characterizations, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 52, no. 8, pp. 1934-1943, Aug. 2004. [4] M. Norris, and J. Richard, Sub-Miniature Antenna Design for Wireless Implants, Proceedings of the IET Seminar on Antennas and Propagation for Body-Centric Wireless Communications, pp. 57-62, April 2007. [5] H. Higgins, Body Implant Communications Is it a Reality?, Proceedings of the IET Seminar on Antennas and Propagation for Body-Centric Wireless Communications, pp. 33-36, April 2007. [6] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory: Analysis and Design, John Wiley, 2nd Ed., 1997. [6] D. M. Pozar, Microstrip Antennas, Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 80, no. 1, Jan. 1992. [7] J. D. Kraus, Electromagnetics, McGraw-Hill, 3rd Ed., 1984. [8] M. Okoniewski, and M. A. Stuchly, A Study of the Handset Antenna and Human Body Interaction, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 44, no. 10, pp. 1855-1864, Oct. 1996. [9] D. Andreuccetti, M. Bini, A. Ignesti, R. Olmi, S. Priori and R. Vanni, High Permittivity Patch Radiator for Single and Multi-Element Hyperthermia Applicators, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol. 40, no. 7, July 1993. [10] C. M. Hsu, T. C. Yo, C. M. Lee and C. H. Luo, The Low Power Biotelemetry Architecture for Implantable Applications, IEEE APS Symposium, pp. 3193-3196, July 2007. f For the 10gm tissue that we have used the transmit power should be less than 16mW (1.6W/kg x0.010kg). This would reduce our link budget by approximately 18dB. The formula given in the text uses directivity instead of gain; however, this is only valid if there is no loss in radiation. CST (Computer Simulation Technology) considers the antenna and the body as the radiator. Therefore, the gain is the gain of the complete structure and not just the designed antenna.

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