Electrical properties of nude rat skin and design of implantable antennas for wireless data telemetry

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to design and testing of a small size dual band implantable antenna operating in Medical Implant Communications Service (MICS) (402 MHz–405 MHz) and Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) (2.4 GHz–2.48 GHz) bands. The antenna is intended for wireless medical monitoring of the physiological parameters such as glucose, pressure, temperature etc. First, the electrical properties (εr and σ) of skin samples from donor rats were measured at MSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine and then a computer model was created. The dual band antenna was then designed using an in-house Finite Element Boundary Integral solvers in conjunction with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. In vitro tests are performed using skin mimicking materials. Results regarding the return loss and gain of the designed antenna were given and discussed in detail.