A Wearable and Implantable UWB Antenna for Brain Computer Interface

In this paper, a pair of implant and wearable antennas for brain-computer interface applications are proposed. The implant antenna, designed as a slotted patch, is embedded within the human skull. The receiver antenna is considered to be located on top, outer rim of the left ear and envisioned to act as a relay to capture and retransmit neural data. The antennas operate in lower Ultra-WideBand frequency range, allowing for higher data rates required for dense spatiotemporal sampling of the brain neural activity. The communication performance between the implant and wearable antennas is evaluated for two implant locations (i.e., vertex area of calvaria and temporal region). It is shown that under worst-case scenario and given the regulatory limit on specific absorption rate, the received signal power is around -57.9 dBm. This is above typical UWB receiver sensitivity; therefore, reliable communication with the wearable receiver is feasible.