Wireless Power Transfer to Implantable Medical Devices With Multi-Layer Planar Spiral Coils

Implantable medical devices such as pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillators, deep brain stimulators, retinal and cochlear implants are gaining significant attraction and growth due to their capability to monitor the health condition in real time, diagnose a particular disease, or provide treatment for a particular disease. In order to charge these devices, wireless power transfer technology is considered as a powerful means. This eliminates the need for extra surgery to replace the battery. In this chapter, some of the major implanted medical devices are reviewed. Then, various wireless power transfer configurations are reviewed briefly for charging such devices. The chapter continues with reviewing wireless power transfer configurations based on the multi-layer printed or non-printed planar spiral coils. At the end, some of the recent works related to using multi-layer planar spiral coils for safe and efficient powering of IMDs will be discussed.