RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Open Hardware: Towards a Fully-Wireless Sub-Cranial Neuro-Implant for Measuring Electrocorticography Signals
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 036855
DO 10.1101/036855
A1 David Rotermund
A1 Jonas Pistor
A1 Janpeter Hoeffmann
A1 Tim Schellenberg
A1 Dmitriy Boll
A1 Elena Tolstosheeva
A1 Dieter Gauck
A1 Dagmar Peters-Drolshagen
A1 Andreas K. Kreiter
A1 Martin Schneider
A1 Steffen Paul
A1 Walter Lang
A1 Klaus R. Pawelzik
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/01/15/036855.abstract
AB Implantable invasive neuronal interfaces to the brain are an important keystone for many interesting future medical applications. However, entering this field of research is difficult since such an implant requires components from many different fields of technology. Beside the required amplifiers, analog-digital-converters and data processing, the complete avoidance of wires is important because it reduces the risk of infection and prevents long-term bio-mechanical problems. Thus, means for wireless transmitting data and energy are also necessary.We present a module, containing the necessary components for wireless data transfer and inductive powering for such implantable neural systems, and its base station. They are completely built of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components and the design files are available as Open Hardware / Open Source. The data is transmitted via Microsemi ZL70102 transceivers and custom Tx/Rx antennas for bidirectional communication using frequencies in the MICS band, with a maximal data rate of 515 kbit/s. The energy is transmitted via a wireless inductive energy-link based on the Qi standard. On the implant site a handwound litz wire coil harvests energy from the magnetic field and delivers, over a short distance, more than enough inductive power to the fully implantable unit.Based on this wireless module we also present a fully wireless neuronal implant for simultaneously measuring electrocorticographic (ECoG) signals at 128 locations from the surface of the brain. The implant is based on a flexible printed circuit board and is aimed to be implanted under the skull.The application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) was designed in-house and allows to adapt the data processing of the implant to changing user-defined parameters.