Toward an ultrasonic Internet of medical things

Abstract

Wireless networked systems of “smart” miniaturized and electronically controlled implantable or wearable medical sensors and actuators will be the basis of many innovative and potentially revolutionary therapies and applications. The main obstacle in realizing this vision of smart networked implants is posed by the dielectric nature of the human body, which strongly attenuates radio-frequency electromagnetic waves used in traditional wireless technologies such as Bluetooth or WiFi. This talk will give an overview of our work exploring a radically different approach, i.e., establishing wireless networked systems in human tissues that transfer data and energy through acoustic waves at ultrasonic frequencies. We will start off by discussing applications of networked implantable medical systems.We will then analyze fundamental aspects of ultrasonic propagation in human tissues and their impact on the design of wireless networking protocols at different layers of the networking protocol stack. We will then review our work on designing and prototyping ultrasonically rechargeable and connected Internet-of-Things platforms through a closed-loop combination of mathematical modeling, simulation, and experimental evaluation.