Remote powered medical implants

Healthcare of the future will rely on lots of sensor devices especially long term monitoring sensors. In order to gain acceptance by the patients these devices have to be completely imperceptible and maintenance free. A solution to these requirements is a remote powered implantable sensor system. One of the biggest challenges of such systems is the power supply. Ideal sensor systems do not require any kind of battery for reliable operation. Instead they harvest the energy from the electromagnetic field of the interrogating device. In this talk a possible solution to this problem will be presented. The sensor system is based on an integrated circuit, which consists of a backscattering transceiver and an ultra-low-power analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for sensor data acquisition. With its power consumption of less than 10 μ\\ν incl. the ADC, it is possible to harvest the energy from the electromagnetic field and supply the complete ASIC.