Study of Rotation and Bending Effects on a Flexible Hybrid Implanted Power Transfer and Wireless Antenna System

We present rotational misalignment and bending effects on a hybrid system to transfer power and data wirelessly for an implantable device. The proposed system consists of a high-frequency coil (13.56 MHz) to transfer power and an ultra-high frequency antenna (905 MHz) for data communication. The system performance and the transmitted power were studied under two misalignment conditions: (1) receiver rotation around itself with reference to the transmitter, and (2) bending of the implanted receiver under three different radii. Implanted receiver was printed on a flexible Kapton substrate and placed inside a layered body tissue model at a 30 mm depth. It is shown that the inductive link is stable under rotational misalignment and three bending conditions, whereas the communication data link is suitable to be used if the rotation angle is less than 75 degrees or larger than 150 degrees. The results show that the resonance frequency varies by 1.6%, 11.05%, and 6.62% for the bending radii of 120 mm, 80 mm, and 40 mm, respectively. Moreover, transmission efficiency varies by 4.3% for the bending radius of 120 mm. Decreasing the bending radius has more effects on antenna transmission efficiency that may cause severe losses in the communication link.