Design and characterization of on-head antenna systems for neural motor prosthesis

This paper presents two antennas at 434 MHz for neuro motor prosthesis. The implanted antenna consists of a meandered dipole that can be positioned on the head. The external antenna is a high permittivity periodic structure loaded planar dipole antenna which is of low profile and has high directivity. Both the antennas are optimized with the head tissues that are approximated by three homogeneous layers consisting of skin, fat, and muscle. The antenna system exhibits a link loss of about 14 dB when the antennas are placed 8 cm away from each other, which has been successfully applied in a neural motor prosthetic system.