Systematic analysis and experiment of inductive coupling and induced voltage for inductively coupled wireless implantable neurostimulator application

The main strategy for wireless power transfer to implantable devices is to use inductive coupling technology. The induced voltage of implanted devices highly depends on factors such as mutual inductance between the external transmitter coil and the receiver coil, quality factor of the receiver circuit and operation frequency. In this paper, the mutual inductance under a variety of geometries of external coil and under the condition of different vertical distances, lateral displacements and angular misalignments between two coils were theoretically calculated and simulated. To ascertain the condition of maximum power transmission for certain coils' position requirements, an LC tank (2.7 mm x 2 mm) consisting of a microfabricated gold inductor coil and a small surface mounted capacitor was designed and fabricated as the telemetric part of a neurostimulator. The induced voltage of the LC tank was measured in both air and artificial tissue media under different sizes of power coil and operation frequencies. As a result, the optimum size of a transmitter coil is selected to be of 4 mm inner radius with six turns of coil, while the whole coupling system operates at 94 MHz resonant frequency within 5-11 mm vertical distance, 0-4 mm lateral and 0 degrees-50 degrees angular misalignment between two coils. With the change of the above coils' positions, the measured induced voltage drops within 30%, satisfying the surgical requirement for neurostimulator implantation.