Design of Wireless Power Transfer Systems Using Magnetic Resonance Coupling for Implantable Medical Devices

Efficient and compact wireless power transfer (WPT) systems are proposed and designed for recharging small implantable medical devices. They use the magnetic resonance coupling scheme to transfer power over a relatively large distance. The receiver resonator coil and the load loop are designed in correspondence to size restriction of implantable devices. The dimensions of the coils are optimized and effective values of the lumped capacitors are investigated and fine-tuned for efficiency enhancement. Three design configurations of the WPT system, each consisting of two coils at the transmitter and two coils at the receiver, are designed and fabricated. The transfer efficiency is measured over different transmission distances and with different orientation angles of the receiver coils. The measurement results show good agreements with the simulations and illustrate that the proposed WPT systems exhibit nearly omnidirectional radiation performance. Furthermore, the receiver coils are implanted inside of a biological object to show the power can be transferred effectively.