Joint power and thermal management for implantable devices

In this paper, a joint power and thermal management method is developed for implantable devices to achieve three goals: sustainable operation, performance maximization, and thermal safety. The sustainable operation and performance maximization are guaranteed by designing an appropriate objective function. The thermal safety during operation is ensured by adding a constraint that limits the maximum temperature. The temperature of the implantable device is provided by a thermal model implemented for the device. Then the theory of model predictive control is used to solve the problem. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through a simulation study that is based on a previously published platform. The platform is a wireless powered optogenetic stimulation device, and the optics module temperature is a major concern for this application. The highest average input power to the LED is 250 mW in the active mode. The results of the simulation indicate that the proposed method can potentially achieve 34% more operation time while satisfying the same thermal constraint.