Transcutaneous Energy Transfer System Incorporating a Datalink for a Wearable Autonomous Implant

Abstract

This paper presents a newly developed Transcutaneous Energy Transfer (TET) System to supply an electromechanical implant with energy. The system is capable of delivering a power of 1-5 W to the implant over a distance of up to 5 cm via an inductive link with a frequency of 100 kHz. Additionally, the inductive link incorporates a data link which allows transmission of measurement data and information regarding the link quality. Because of the integration of power transfer and data transfer the system is thus energy saving in comparison to most TET systems, which often need an additional second dedicated radio communication channel. For the data transmission from the energy transmitter to the implant frequency shift keying and from the implant to the energy transmitter load modulation has been implemented.