A Deionized Water-Infilled Dual-Layer Insulator-Applied Brain-Implanted UWB Antenna for Wireless Biotelemetry Applications

We propose a novel double-layered insulator configuration for a human-brain-implanted impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) antenna. The dimension of the antenna is
$10.0\times 11.0\times0.954$
mm
³
, including the dual-layer insulator. The insulator provides a dielectric loading effect of
$\varepsilon _{r}~\approx ~50$
(lossless) for obtaining an improved radiating power and the broadband-impedance-matching characteristic in brain tissues. The outer layer is made of biocompatible 3-D printing material, and the inner insulator is filled with deionized water with
$\varepsilon _{r}~\approx ~80$
and loss tangent (tan
$\delta$
)
$\approx ~0.25$
at 4 GHz. A slotted UWB antenna with the proposed insulator is located between the emulated dura and CSF tissues inside the skull for brain signal detection. The design uses a multilayer phantom, mimicking the seven tissue layers of the brain. The impedance and radiation performance of the proposed antenna configuration are also discussed using the commercial high-precision human phantom model. The designed IR-UWB antenna shows a boresight radiation characteristic toward the top of the head with a proper high gain in the target frequency of 3–5 GHz. The computed expectations are verified experimentally. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the UWB spectrum generated from a UWB radio-frequency (RF) transmitter can be transmitted stably using the proposed antenna as a transmitting antenna. In addition, the link budget of the system setup is analyzed. The improved gain characteristic of the antenna from the proposed dual-layer insulator can be utilized to retain the link margins while satisfying the UWB communication regulation and average specific absorption rate (SAR) limitation.