A Conformal Four-Antenna Module for Capsule Endoscope MIMO Operation

In this article, a four-antenna module in a capsule endoscopy is proposed for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) operation to achieve the purpose of real-time transmission of high-resolution images with high data rates. For compactness, the proposed design adopts conformal architecture and fully utilizes the inner wall space of the capsule body to accommodate four antennas in the very limited space of the capsule endoscope. For the availability of MIMO operation, three different technical approaches are used to decouple or improve the isolation between neighboring antenna elements and between diagonal antenna elements. System considerations (interaction between the electronic components and the antenna in the endoscope) and specific absorption ratio (SAR) evaluation are performed to verify the robustness and human safety of the proposed design, respectively. In addition, link margin analysis and MIMO channel parameter studies are carried out to verify the wireless telemetry performance and MIMO operation performance, respectively. Antenna prototypes were fabricated and implanted in minced pork for ex-vivo measurements (S-parameters, gain, and radiation patterns). The measured overlapping impedance bandwidth of the four antenna elements is 120 MHz, which can fully cover the 915 MHz industrial scientific medical (ISM) band. The measured isolation between the neighboring antenna elements and the diagonal antenna elements is better than 20 and 10 dB, respectively. The measured maximum peak realized gain is −18.1 dBi.