Compact Antenna With Broadband Wireless Biotelemetry for Future Leadless Pacemakers

This communication introduces a miniaturized implantable antenna designed to achieve ultrawide bandwidth for next-generation leadless cardiac pacemakers (LCPs). A broad bandwidth is essential for mitigating detuning challenges and enhancing channel capacity to enable advanced features in LCPs. This antenna, with a volume of 9.44 mm3, achieves a bandwidth of 3.39 GHz and a fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 138%. The antenna covers various frequency bands from 0.76 to 4.15 GHz, including industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) (0.869, 0.915, and 2.45 GHz), wireless medical telemetry service (WMTS) (1.4 GHz), and midfield (1.6 GHz) bands. Antenna simulations conducted within a homogeneous phantom (HP) of heart tissue show the gains of −32.4, −27.94, and −19.8 dBi at 0.915, 1.4, and 2.45 GHz, respectively. The proposed antenna exhibits low specific absorption rate (SAR) levels within a full body model (FBM), achieving the values of less than 1.6 and 2.0 W/kg for 1 and 10 g of tissue, respectively. Furthermore, an analysis of the link budget is performed to calculate the telemetry range for a 10-Mbps data rate. The fabricated prototype is measured in minced pork meat, showing a good match with the simulation results.