Wireless neural signal transmission in biomedical prosthetic systems

Abstract

Over the last 30 years very innovative prosthetic hands have been developed, nevertheless, it emerges that 30 to 50% of the upper extremity amputees do not use their prosthetic hand regularly mainly because of its poor functionality and usability. The design goals of the prosthetic hand are cosmetics, dexterity and controllability. The modular architecture of the bio-mechatronic hand is composed of the following functional subdivisions: the implanted unit (the neural interface electrodes + Patient Neural Recording / Simulating Unit ‹PNR/SU›), the embedded system unit (Neural Processing and Coding System Block + Prosthetic Hand Control and Sensing Block) and the prosthetic hand. The PNR/SU is where the neural signal originating from the Central Nervous System of the patient is processed and converted to a digital signal which is then transmitted to the following functional blocks. Also it can provide the patient with a sensory feedback, acording to the data provided by the previous functional blocks in the feedback flow. The novelty of the approach consists in the bidirectional wireless transmission of the digitalized neural signal, between the implanted unit and the embedded sytem unit for the complete electric insulation of the patient from the high voltages that may occur in the prosthetic hand functional block, but also for the mobility, flexibility, compatibility and high scale integration of the prosthetic system.