Contents I. Introduction
Optogenetics and electrophysiology are state-of-the-art approaches in neuroscience used to advance our knowledge about brain functions, and to develop new therapeutics against brain diseases [1]–[3]. Using these experimental approaches with freely moving animals is a milestone, but requires robust, miniature, lightweight and wireless experimental systems. Small batteries have been used to power up different implantable sensors [4], but they limit the size, weight and the autonomy [5]. Neuroscience platforms utilizing wireless power transmission (WPT) have been designed to avoid the utilization of a battery, and enable uninterrupted experiments with live animals. The concept is shown in Fig. 1: a power amplifier converts a DC supply voltage into an AC power carrier passed to a primary coil (the power transmitter (TX) of the link), which has mutual coupling with a secondary coil (the power receiver (RX) of the link). The RX coil conveys the received power carrier to a power management system (PMU) where it is rectified and regulated to extract a DC supply voltage. In this application, the PMU must supply several modules including a low-noise multichannel data acquisition system, a wireless radio transceiver, a microcontroller (MCU) and a high power neural stimulator (either electrical or optical), etc. Therefore, increasing the PTE and the power delivered to the load (PDL) are essential milestones in the design of robust wireless power transmission links intended for this application.
Representation of the wireless neuroscience platform including a wireless neural headstage, a multi-coil resonant WPT system, a motion tracking system and a wireless base station.
