Wireless power transfer system rigid to tissue characteristics using metamaterial inspired geometry for biomedical implant applications

Abstract

Conventional resonant inductive coupling wireless power transfer (WPT) systems encounter performance degradation while energizing biomedical implants. This degradation results from the dielectric and conductive characteristics of the tissue, which cause increased radiation and conduction losses, respectively. Moreover, the proximity of a resonator to the high permittivity tissue causes a change in its operating frequency if misalignment occurs. In this report, we propose a metamaterial inspired geometry with near-zero permeability property to overcome these mentioned problems. This metamaterial inspired geometry is stacked split ring resonator metamaterial fed by a driving inductive loop and acts as a WPT transmitter for an in-tissue implanted WPT receiver. The presented demonstrations have confirmed that the proposed metamaterial inspired WPT system outperforms the conventional one. Also, the resonance frequency of the proposed metamaterial inspired TX is negligibly affected by the tissue characteristics, which is of great interest from the design and operation prospects. Furthermore, the proposed WPT system can be used with more than twice the input power of the conventional one while complying with the safety regulations of electromagnetic waves exposure.