Wireless Power Transfer for Wearable and Implantable Devices: a Review Focusing on the WPT4WID Research Project of National Relevance

In future health-care systems, wearable/implantable devices are foreseen as strong breakthroughs to allow patients home monitoring, enabling better life and more sustainable health care systems. Although electronics for implantable sensors are relatively mature, ensuring the energy to reliably operate with these devices is still missing. The Research Project of National Relevance (PRIN) WPT4WID (Wireless Power Transfer for Wearable and Implantable Devices) is focused on the development of innovative solutions for wireless power transfer applications. The research has specific concerns to the trustworthiness and medical compliance of the implementations, searching for the best trade-off among miniaturization, energy transfer efficiency, and safety. This main goal is achieved through a multidisciplinary approach able to efficiently model and characterize the devices and the wireless channel as a whole, for both near-field resonant and far-field radiative coupling mechanisms.