Implantables

Principal Investigators:

Anantha Chandrakasan

Students:

Patrick Mercier, Saurav Bandyopadhyay

Description

In certain actuation and sensing applications, medical electronics must be implanted inside the human body to generate or acquire reliable signals that are otherwise unobtainable directly outside of the human body. General examples may include pacing, cochlear, and retinal implants. Operational lifetimes of such devices are typically designed to be on the order of years, as invasive surgery is generally required for implantation. As a result, implanted medical electronics face significant energy and power constraints, which are further amplified by the fact that such devices are extremely weight and volume constrained in many applications.

The goal of this project is to improve the efficiency of sensing, energy harvesting, power transfer, and communication by addressing circuit implementations and system-level optimizations.