Compact Dual Band Implantable Antenna for

Bio-telemetry Application
Ayush Agarwal Jeet Ghosh
Dept. of Electronics and Communication Engg. Dept. of Electronics and Communication Engg.
The LNM Institute of Information Technology The LNM Institute of Information Technology
Jaipur, India Jaipur, India
22uec029@[Link] [Link]@[Link]

Gopinath Samanta M.V. Deepak Nair

Dept. of Electronics and Communication Engg. Dept. of Electronics and Communication Engg.
The LNM Institute of Information Technology The LNM Institute of Information Technology
Jaipur, India Jaipur, India
[Link]@[Link] [Link]@[Link]

Abstract—In this paper, a compact dual-band implantable the radiation performance of the antenna [2]. As a result, in or-
antenna working at 915 MHz and 2.45 GHz is presented. The der for the implanted antenna to function well in this sensitive
proposed antenna consists of several horizontal and vertical slots area, it must meet several requirements, including safe input
along with the shorting pin and full ground plane. Due to the
compact design along with the full ground plane, the structure power and specific absorption rate (SAR). To establish the
became a good candidate for implantable devices. The proposed communication link between WIMD and external unit, specific
antenna has a compact size of 9.5 × 9.5 × 0.54mm3 , which seems frequency bands, namely the medical implantable communi-
to be a very compact and miniaturized antenna. Moreover, the cation service frequency band (MICS, 402–405 MHz), the
estimated specific absorption rate (SAR) complies with the IEEE wireless medical telemetry service frequency band (WMTS,
standard for human safety. Lastly, a prototype of the proposed
dual-band implantable antenna configuration has been fabricated 1.395–1.4 GHz), and the industrial, scientific, and medical fre-
and tested, and the measured result shows a good degree of quency bands (ISM, 433–434 MHz, 902–908 MHz, 2.4–2.48
consistency with the simulated one. GHz, 5.715–5.875 GHz) are allocated [3], [5], [6]. However,
Index Terms—Implantable antenna, dual band, Slot, bio- it is observed that most of the reported antennas operate at a
telemetry, SAR. single frequency. In [7], an annular ring-shaped antenna has
been reported for the ISM 2.4 GHz frequency band. A single
I. I NTRODUCTION band meander-shaped implantable linear polarized antenna is
With the rapid development in the medical along with reported by Yang [Link]. for wireless pacemaker system [8].
information and communication technology, the modern-day However, to manage several tasks at once, including data
healthcare industry has shifted its focus from reactive to transfer, Sensing, wireless power transfer, and sleep/wake
preventive care. Due to this paradigm shift, the demand for applications, these advanced multitasking devices need to be
wireless implantable medical devices (WIMD) to monitor able to operate across multiple bands [9].
physiological data, such as glucose monitoring, brain signal In order to achieve the requirement, engineers and re-
monitoring, pacemaker and capsule endoscopy systems etc, searchers are interested in designing dual-band or multi-band
has significantly increased in the last couple of years. The antenna systems with stable radiation performance. In [10],
WIMD can extract the bio-signal from the vital organ and a dual-band antenna with a dimension of 478 mm3 has
transmit the information via an implantable antenna unit been reported. A cubic-shaped dual-band implantable antenna
to the external or on-body receiver unit [1]. The WIMD with a dimension of 15 × 15 × 15 mm3 has been proposed
mainly consist of four components, Sensors, Batteries, RF in [11]. The relatively large sizes in the aforementioned
circuitry and Antenna [2]. To achieve reliable and efficient design make the structure unsuitable for implant application.
data transmission, the implantable antenna unit is considered An implantable PIFA-based antenna structure operating on
an important component in the WIMD system [3]. 400 and 915 MHz bands has been reported in [12] with a
In recent times, extensive research on developing im- dimension of 280 mm3 . To achieve more miniaturization, the
plantable antenna can be found in the literature [1], [4]. circular-shaped multiband antenna is proposed in [13] with
However, many challenges, such as miniaturization of the an overall dimension of 63.61 mm3 . It should be noted that,
antenna unit, reliable communication link between the WIMD instead of the full ground, most of the aforementioned work
and external unit etc, are still open. Apart from these, high consists of several slots and defects in the ground plane. The
permittivity and electrical loss of the human tissue also affect defects or slots in the ground plane affect the nearby electronic
circuitry due to the near-field leakage current. On the other
hand, a complete ground is also utilized to support the antenna
in order to lessen the effect of variations in the integrated
device’s and human tissues’ dielectric characteristics on the
antenna’s performance [14]. To overcome this problem, in
[15], a circular polarized (CP) antenna is reported with a
dimension of 9.8 × 9.8 × .889 mm3 . It is also observed that
to address the issue of the mismatch in antenna orientation,
several aforementioned works are reported antennae with CP
characteristics [14], [15]. But recent research has revealed
that the CP wave experiences the depolarization impact while
navigating the complex structure of human tissue [16]. A
linearly polarized implanted antenna is more pertinent in this
context [16].
Inspired by the aforementioned criterion, in this paper, a
miniaturized dual-band linear polarized implantable antenna
with full ground plane is presented. The proposed antenna,
consisting of vertical and horizontal slots, shorting pin and
full ground, is operating at 915 MHz and 2.4 GHz fre-
quency band having a volume of 45.87 mm3 . Furthermore,
for the patient’s safety, the specific absorption rate (SAR)
is monitored and simulated SAR is within the safe limit. Fig. 2. Evaluation Stages of the proposed antenna. (a) Schematic design (b)
The simulated responses are experimentally validated within S11 response of each stages (c) Input. impedance of the Final antenna
the skin-mimicking gel environment and there is very good
agreement between the simulated and measured results.
the HSP with an implant depth of 3 mm from the surface of
II. D ESIGN M ETHODOLOGY the skin. The antenna structure is excited by a 50 Ω coaxial
The proposed implantable antenna is shown in Fig. 1. The cable. The antenna structure consists of horizontal and vertical
antenna is fabricated over a 0.254 mm thick dielectric substrate slots, shorting pin and full ground. the cross-section view of
with permittivity (εr ) of 10.2 and dielectric loss tangent the antenna structure is also shown in Fig. 1. Due to this full
of 0.0035. A superstrate layer of similar dielectric constant ground structure, near-field radiation from the antenna does
and thickness to cover the top radiating patch layer. In this not affect the circuit component located beneath the ground
design, a high dielectric material is chosen for substrate and plane. The Optimum dimension of the proposed antenna is
superstrate so that it helps to miniaturize the antenna profile by enlisted in the caption of Fig. 1.
shorting the guided wavelength [17]. The design and analysis
of the antenna structure is performed inside the human skin A. Evaluation Stages
phantom with a relative permittivity of 41.33 and conductivity In order to understand the radiation performance and minia-
of 0.872 S/m [18]. The antenna is embedded at the centre of turization techniques of the proposed antenna, the various
development stages and their corresponding responses are
shown in Fig. 2. Initially, a square-shaped patched antenna
with diagonal feeding is considered as shown in Fig. 2(a). As
a initial step, square shaped antenna structure is used to exite
two de-genarated mode inside the structure. It is observed from
Fig. 2(b) that the antenna of stage 1 is resonating at 4.5 GHz
frequency. To achieve dual-band functionality, a horizontal slot
is included in stage 2. This horizontal slot provides different
electrical path lanes on the two orthogonal mode. As a result,
antenna in the stage 2 resonated at 2.5 GHz and 4.2 GHz
frequency bands. To achieve more miniaturization, a vertical
pair slot is etched from the radiating patch as shown in
Stage 3 of Fig. 2(a). This vertical slot increase the electrical
path length as well as reactance of the structure. The slot
is positioned where the surface current is most concentrated,
Fig. 1. Schematic of the implantable antenna. The geometrical parameter of
the antenna: Wsub = Lsub = 9.5, Wp =Lp = 9, Ws1 = 1.2, Ls1 = 2.55, Ls2
thereby disrupting its propagation. or the sake of brevity, the
=3.2, Ws2 = 0.6, Wsh = 0.8, Xs = Ys = 1.1, gos =0.5, gs1 =0.5, gs2 =0.9, surface current distribution for each stage is not presented in
gsv =0.9, h = 0.254 (units are in mm). this paper. Due to this vertical slot, the higher frequency band
 Fig. 4. Radiation pattern of the antenna at (a) 0.915 GHz and (b) 2.45 GHz.

Fig. 3. Surface current distribution at (a) 0.915 GHz and (b) 2.45 GHz.

shifted to 3.2 GHz without creating any disturbance in the

lower frequency band. In the next step, a pair of L-shaped
slots and a open-ended slot are included in the patch. The
geometrical parameter and the position of each slot provide
a significant effect on the antenna performance. It is noticed
from Fig. 2(b) that at stage 4, the antenna is resonating at the
2.4 GHz frequency band and at the 2.1 GHz frequency band,
another mode is generated. However, at stage 4, the antenna
does not show any resonance at the 915 MHz frequency band.
Finally, at stage 5, a metallic shorting pin is embedded in the
substrate as shown in Fig. 2(a). The shorting pin is placed in a
Fig. 5. SAR analysis in the HSP model (a) at 0.915 GHz in 1-g tissue model.
position where the surface current density is maximum. Due to (b)at 0.915 GHz in 10 -g tissue model. (c) at 2.45 GHz in 1-g tissue model.
this inclusion, the lower frequency band is shifted to the 915 (d) at 2.45 GHz in 10-g tissue model..
MHz frequency band whereas, the higher frequency band is
tuned to 2.45 GHz. It should be noted that the position of the
via plays a significant role to tune the frequency of operation. B. Safety analysis
The input impedance of the final antenna is shown in Fig. For implantable antenna systems, thorough safety analysis is
2(c). The real part of the input impedance of the implantable essential. When an antenna transmits electromagnetic energy
antenna is around 50 Ω whereas the reactance part is around in the body, surrounding tissues absorb it, posing potential
0. The aforementioned phenomenon satisfies the resonance risks if absorption exceeds safety limits. SAR (Specific Ab-
condition of the antenna. sorption Rate) is a key standard to ensure safety, with IEEE
To comprehend the radiation behaviour of the suggested guidelines limiting maximum average SAR to 1.6 W/kg for 1-
antenna, the surface current distribution across the implanted g of tissue and 2 W/kg for 10-g of tissue (IEEE C95.1-1999,
antenna’s top and bottom planes was observed, and the re- IEEE C95.1-2005) [19].
sults are displayed in Fig. 3. Since the implantable antenna
resonates in several frequency ranges, we must monitor the 1
Z
1
Z
surface currents at 2.45 GHz and 0.915 GHz as shown in SARavg = SAR(m)dm = σ|E(r)|2 dv (1)
M 2M
Fig. 3(a) and 3(b), respectively. It can be stated from the
surface current distribution that, at different frequencies, the Where, σ(r) is the conductivity of the tissue and E(r) is the
antenna exhibits different radiation modes. At 0.915 GHz, electrical field vector. In the eq (1), the M indicate the Mass
the surface current over the top plane exhibits a consistent of integrated region ( i.e, 1 g or 10 g)
direction of current flow. On the other hand, in the ground It should be noted that the SAR analysis was conducted
plane, the surface current direction is opposite to the top in the HSP model and Head model at all the frequency band
plane. This phenomenon indicates that at 0.915 GHz, the of operation for 1W input power as shown in Fig. 5 and 6
proposed antenna operates in quarter wavelength monopole respectively. For the HSP model, maximum SAR of 484 w/kg
mode. Conversely, the top plane’s current reverses direction and 147 w/kg was observed for 1 and 10 g model at .915 GHz.
once at 2.45 GHz, suggesting that the antenna functions in Whereas, for 2.45 GHz, the maximum SAR value for HSP
a half-wavelength mode at these frequencies. The radiation model with 1 and 10 g model was 413 w/kg and 169 w/kg
pattern of the implantable antenna in both E and H planes is respectively. We also monitor the SAR value by implanting
shown in Fig. 4. the antenna inside the head phantom as shown in Fig. 6. The
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