Collaborative Research: A Novel Wireless Power Transmission Architecture for Devices Implanted in Human Bodies

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The objective of this program is to verify a distributed power transmission architecture to deliver radio frequency power to devices implanted in human bodies. The proposed architecture aims to construct efficient and reliable wireless channels in complex in-body environments for power transfer. If proved feasible, it would fundamentally resolve a few problems associated with the state-of-the-art wireless charging technologies, including low efficiency, potential hazard to human health, and large and heavy apparatuses.The intellectual merit is the proposed distributed power transmission architecture, which is potentially transformative to enable next-generation systems for wireless power delivery. Specifically, it has two major innovations. First, radio frequency power is transmitted via multiple antenna elements physically attached to a large area of skin and electrically matched to the skin. Second, the multiple antenna elements jointly behave as a retro-reflective beamformer: guided by the pilot signal sent from an implanted device, their radiations spatially converge to the target device with power intensities at all other locations below safety levels regulated for human.The broader impacts include (i) promoting the contemporary Body Area Networks to the next level of integration; (ii) supporting both graduate and undergraduate students and provide them with excellent research opportunities; (iii) making constructive impacts to the science and engineering curricula at the three participating institutes; (iv) offering local high school students and teachers to participate in the proposed research activities; and (v) impacting both research and educational aspects of North Texas' high-tech industries.