Telemetry for implantable medical devices: Part 3 - Data telemetry

This three-part article focuses on this power and data telemetry for implantable medical devices (IMDs). It is not restricted to circuit and system descriptions but outlines the background of the application along with typical requirements to motivate why the circuits are being built as found in state-of-theart publications. To cover this wide range of topics, the article is split into three parts. This final (third) part is dedicated to data telemetry concepts for IMDs, which are reviewed in principle, split into electromagnetic and optical approaches, and concluded with a system example realizing some of the aforementioned ideas. Coming back to the original term for telemetry, which was the availability of data from a remote sensor, and extending this to bidirectional data links, while restricting it to wireless operation, we shall summarize a few core requirements and then the possibilities and state of the art for implants. [This article is the third of a three-part series on telemetry for implantable medical devices. Part 1 appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of this magazine (pp. 47–51), and Part 2 appeared in the Summer 2014 issue (pp. 60–63).]