A Study on Application of Dielectric Resonator Antenna in Implantable Medical Devices

Worldwide, a large number of patients are benefited every year due to technological advancement in implantable medical devices (IMDs) such as in hyperthermia and bio-telemetry. The combination of sensors and antennas defined the quality of the implantable device. Antenna communities strive hard to fulfill the needs of the medical world by introducing new designs and concepts in this field. The purpose of this study is to identify major existing challenges and provide suitable solution of these challenges for implant applications. Present implant antennas have faced inferior performance due to high metallic losses and varied implant depth. The human body is a combination of dielectric materials, regardless of whether it is liquid (eg. water), gels or hard bones. In this study, first time a dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) resonating at 2.45 GHz, has been proposed as an implantable antenna with no metallic losses, varied implant depth performance and bio-compatibility. The implant DRA is placed on a bio-compatible polyvinyl chloride (PVC) substrate with a thickness of 0.5 mm. The rectangular DRA excited by a coplanar waveguide feed is proposed and its performance is compared with the help of four phantoms given in the literature. A detailed link design study was also undertaken in view of the different applications.