Miniaturized Four-Port MIMO Implantable Antenna for High-Data-Rate Wireless-Capsule-Endoscopy Applications

Abstract

This study proposes a miniaturized four-port multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) implantable antenna for wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE). The proposed MIMO implantable antenna operates in the 2.45 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band, has a compact size of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$6.2\,\, \times 5.2\,\, \times 0.127~\text {mm}^{3}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , and comprises four meandered resonators sharing a common slotless ground plane with an acceptable bandwidth (14.2%) and low mutual coupling. These features help the antenna achieve high data rates and countering multipath distortions, as confirmed using MIMO channel parameters. The calculated link budget analysis of the proposed antenna suggests that seamless high-rate (78-Mbps) information transmission can be efficiently achieved over a distance of up to 10 m (when placed in the large intestine). The proposed MIMO implantable antenna was optimized by placing it inside a capsule comprising sensors, batteries, and electronic components and was subsequently fabricated. The simulated ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$S$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -parameters, gain, and radiation patterns) and measured (in the minced pork) results were in close agreement with a measured bandwidth of 350 MHz and a peak measured gain of −20.1 dBi. To ensure patient safety, the specific absorption rate (SAR) was evaluated for all the four ports in different environments (stomach and small and large intestines), and satisfactory results were obtained. MIMO performance parameters, such as the envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), diversity gain (DG), and channel capacity (CC), were also evaluated and acceptable values were noted. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most compact four-element implantable MIMO antenna designed so far for biomedical applications.