Volume Conduction Invasive Medical Data Communication System

The recent war on terrorism and international peace-keeping missions have clearly shown the increase of threats from non-traditional enemies. Protecting soldiers from immediate casualties and knowing their physiological status represent an important problem in the battlefield of the future. One powerful solution to this problem is to implant, using advanced minimally invasive techniques, a millimeter or sub-millimeter size, but highly intelligent device within the body of soldiers for physiological monitoring, threat alert, internal stimulation, and drug-delivery. Resent development in sub-micron electronics, nanotechnology, and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) have provided powerful tools for constructing devices of this type. However, one fundamental problem has not yet been solved: how do these devices communicate with computers outside the human body? Running wires across the skin is clearly unacceptable in the battlefield environment, wireless radio frequency (RF) connection through the body has a number of drawbacks. The primary goal of this research is to develop a communication and power delivery channel capable of passing information between the inside and the outside of the human body. This channel will be constructed within a prototype miniature implantable device and will be thoroughly tested to demonstrate its feasibility.