Practical Inductive Link Design for Wirelessly Powering Medical Implants

Abstract

Actually resonant inductive coupling wireless power transfer (RIC WPT) is considered the safest method to power-up medical implants, with respecting the human body exposure limits to electromagnetic field (EM). In the literature, several approaches describe how to design the inductive links, some analytic and others numerical, each has advantages and drawbacks. As a result, undertaking a link design is mostly a difficult task, especially for newcomers to the subject. This tutorial paper summarizes the key analysis required for link design. In addition it illustrates the proposed RIC WPT system for medical implants. Experimental results made in the air medium show that the proposed system reaches a power transfer efficiency of 75.1% for 0.5cm and reaches 5 cm as a maximum transfer distance for 10.67% of the efficiency.