FPGA Microwave Link Testbed for Wireless MRI

Motivation: MRI coil arrays are now burdened by cable and connector limitations that inhibit conformability. Goal(s): We seek a low cost approach to wireless MRI coil data links that is easy to scale with multiple array subsections. We demonstrate feasibility of a FPGA-based short-range microwave wireless serial link. Approach: A complete end to end link was constructed for link distances of 20cm. A low power FPGA sent scrambled serial data with embedded start/stop bits to a receiver with FPGA recovery of the data. Results: This complete demo could achieve over 200Mbps with a simple FPGA, mixer and oscillator. Impact: Cutting the cord of MRI arrays has been a long-term goal of MRI engineering. It would eliminate the mechanical and RF pitfalls of the cable, and enable more conformable and wearable receive arrays.