Implanted helical dipole antenna for UHF band applications

In the early stage of development, implanted medical devices, which use inductive coupling for communication, could only transmit their data within a few centimeters range [1],[2]. In the recent years, telecommunications has brought implantable device systems are required to enable longer bidirectional communication between the implanted device and an external device [1],[3]. The external devices could be a home monitoring device or portable equipment, that provides the patient more mobility. Through either approach, the patient or the health care provider (e.g., the physician) could benefit from timely and ease of access to important patient medical information via a networked connection [3]. Hence, small antennas for implantable devices are essensial components to the monitoring systems to provide wirelessly communication between a patient and an access point. This paper proposes an implanted helical dipole antenna for an impantable device in wireless patient monitoring applications. The design is considered that by only using a syringe the device can be embedded into the human body for simplicity purpose. The antenna is operated in UHF band 924 MHz as consideration Indonesian frequency allocation for RFID applications [4]. The design consideration, antenna structure and its calculation results are provided in this paper in the following sections.