Newcastle Visual Prosthesis Implantable Control Unit

Abstract

Visual prosthesis requires a subcutaneous control unit to transfer information from an external headset to a brain implant in order to restore sight. Optogenetic prosthesis need high power than their electrical equivalents, but resolution can potentially be higher. Both necessitate dedicated embedded hardware. External system is wirelessly powered and receives a compressed video stream using our zRLE protocol, which needs decompression. Transmission is via Bluetooth communication. The control system is then designed to communicate with custom ASICs which directly control the brain implant. Our architecture is composed of 4 functional modules: wireless power receiving module, power management module, core control module, and wireless data receiving module. All the above modules are integrated on a circular PCB prototype, and the entire control system has to operate efficiently with three local micro-controller compute cores.