Wireless Power Transmission System for High-Throughput Behavioral Studies on Small Freely Moving Animal Subjects

项目摘要 在对小型自由移动动物（如啮齿动物）进行的行为神经科学实验中， 已被广泛用于实现可穿戴/可植入设备（WID）的无线和无电池操作 附着或植入动物体内的。通常，神经科学实验需要长时间运行， 在足够大的受试者群体中进行周期，以提高实验的质量和统计有效性 结果研究人员需要将动物从他们的家转移到实验竞技场，一次一只， 并在实验结束后将动物送回家庭并最终送回动物设施。这 这一过程对研究人员来说是相当劳动密集型和低效的，对动物来说是有压力的，而且成本很高。我们有 开发了一种机架式无线笼系统，称为EHC系统。EHC系统是一种基于共振的 多线圈感应链接系统围绕一个标准大小的啮齿类动物的家。同时操作 多个EHC系统可以增加每个实验段中的数据吞吐量。然而， 相邻EHC系统之间存在严重的交叉耦合，这将改变系统的运行 这可能会降低发射机的功率参数，特别是发射机谐振频率，并使发射机的功率传输效率恶化。 感应链路感应链路甚至进入频率分裂区时，相邻homecage放置 比某个阈值更接近。并且分裂的谐振频率不能通过调谐 谐振电容为了应对这一挑战，我们提出了一个多EHC系统， 同时操作EHC单元的阵列，这些单元在标准机架中彼此紧邻放置， 谐振电抗屏蔽线圈在相邻的EHC单元之间，并实现三环自动调谐， 每个EHC单元用于高通量实验。屏蔽线圈将减少不希望的互耦合 将相邻EHC单元之间的电压调节到某个阈值，三环自动调谐技术可以调节每个 EHC单元在连续的基础上并在延长的时间段内处于其最佳无线电力传输条件 而操作员的参与最少。

Project Summary In behavioral neuroscience experiments on small freely moving animals, such as rodents, wireless cage systems have been widely used to enable wireless and battery-free operation of wearable/implantable devices (WIDs) attached to or implanted in the animal body. Typically, the neuroscience experiments need to run for extended periods in large enough subject populations to enhance the quality and statistical validity of the experiment results. Researchers need to transfer animals from their homecage to the experimental arena, one at a time, and return the animals back to the homecage and eventually to the animal facility after the experiments. This procedure is quite labor-intensive and inefficient for researchers, stressful for the animals, and costly. We have developed a rack-mountable wireless cage system, called EHC system. The EHC system is a resonance-based multi-coil inductive link system built around a standard-sized rodent homecage. Simultaneously operating multiple EHC systems can increase the data throughput in each experiment section. However, the challenge to do this is the severe cross-couplings among adjacent EHC systems, which would shift the system operating parameters, particularly the transmitter resonance frequency, and deteriorate the power transfer efficiency of the inductive link. The inductive link even enters the frequency-splitting zone when adjacent homecages are placed closer than a certain threshold. And the splitted resonance frequency cannot be converged by tuning the resonance capacitance. To address this challenge, we propose a multi-EHC system to empower the simultaneous operation of an array of EHC units placed right next to each other in the standard rack by adding resonant reactive shielding coils in between the adjacent EHC units and implementing triple-loop auto-tuning in each EHC unit for high throughput experiments. The shielding coil will reduce the undesired mutual coupling between adjacent EHC units to a certain threshold that the triple-loop auto-tuning technique can adjust each EHC unit at its optimal wireless power transmission condition on a continuous basis and over an extended period with minimal operator involvement.