Single-pulse harmonic modulation for short range biomedical inductive data transfer

Short-range, low-power, high data-rate telemetry is an increasingly desirable feature for implantable medical devices (IMDs), and is commonly implemented using an inductive link. Pulse Harmonic Modulation (PHM) provides the desired high data rates and low power consumption, but requires precise pulse timing. This paper presents a modification of PHM, Single-Pulse Harmonic Modulation (SPHM), which offers reduced power consumption and lower implementation complexity. In order to test the SPHM concept, transmitter and receiver circuits were designed in 0.35μm CMOS and simulated. The simulated results suggest that the circuits can transceive data at 50Mb/s, consuming 1.49pJ/b and 2.59pJ/b at the transmitter and receiver respectively, from a 1.2V supply.