An implantable low-power ultrasonic platform for the Internet of Medical Things

Wirelessly networked systems of implantable medical devices endowed with sensors and actuators will be the basis of many innovative, sometimes revolutionary therapies. The biggest obstacle in realizing this vision of networked implantable devices is posed by the dielectric nature of the human body, which strongly attenuates radio-frequency (RF) electromagnetic waves. In this paper we present the first hardware and software architecture of an Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) platform with ultrasonic connectivity for intra-body communications that can be used as a basis for building future IoT-ready medical implantable and wearable devices. We show that ultrasonic waves can be efficiently generated and received with low-power and mm-sized components, and that despite the conversion loss introduced by ultrasonic transducers the gap in attenuation between 2.4GHz RF and ultrasonic waves is still substantial, e.g., ultrasounds offer 70dB less attenuation over 10cm. We show that the proposed IoMT platform requires much lower transmission power compared to 2.4 GHz RF with equal reliability in tissues, e.g., 35 dBm lower over 12 cm for 10−3 Bit Error Rate (BEr) leading to lower energy per bit and longer device lifetime. Finally, we show experimentally that 2.4 GHz RF links are not functional at all above 12 cm, while ultrasonic links achieve a reliability of 10−6 up to 20 cm with less than 0 dBm transmission power.