An Anatomical Model for the Simulation and Development of Subcutaneous Implantable Wireless Devices

This article's objective is to discuss the anatomical and technical challenges associated with designing subcutaneously implanted antennas for continuous wireless medical telemetry. One challenge in this design process is the connection between simulation setup and the anatomical layering of tissues in biological systems. This article presents an overview of the layers of tissues associated with subcutaneous implant (epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis) as well as the measured dielectric properties of these tissues. In addition, this study presents the design and measurement of an implantable dual-band antenna operating on the wireless medical telemetry service (WMTS) (1.395-1.432 GHz) and industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) (2.4-2.5 GHz) communication bands. This antenna was validated ex vivo and in vivo using porcine animal models. The antenna has a simulated bandwidth of 2.3% for WMTS and 5.7% for ISM bands. In addition, the antenna saw a 300 MHz shift, ex vivo, to the right for WMTS while not having a shift for the ISM band. For in vivo validation, two antennas were made and tested in a porcine animal model and both show an adequate transmission range of 10 m.