What a good eye-dea: Battery-less, grain-of-sand-sized 2.4GHz transmitter to help save your eyesight
- Reference: 1596610933
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/08/05/battery_eye_chip/
- Source link:
The 2.4GHz ultra-low power transmitter is about the size of a grain of sand, said Pedro Irazoqui, the Reilly Professor of Biomedical Engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering at America's Purdue University, in a phone interview with The Register on Tuesday.
"It came about because we developed a technology that allowed us to stimulate the interior of the eye in a contact lens," added Irazoqui, who is also the CTO of Bionode, a Purdue-affiliated startup working on a contact lens capable of treating glaucoma.
The [1]transmitter is designed to be implanted in a glaucoma patient's eye to broadcast measurements of their eye pressure which, if too high, can damage the optic nerve and cause blindness. These readings be used by physicians to determine whether to apply electrical current to normalize intraocular pressure.
The gizmo is described in [2]this paper , published by IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II.
[3]
From the paper: A fully implantable transmitter chip for wireless sensor nodes and biomedical devices ... Credit: Hansraj Bhamra/Purdue University. Click to enlarge
Irazoqui said a lot of medical treatments operate in an open loop. "You take antibiotics, but no one is measuring their effectiveness," he said. "What you really want to know is how the body is responding in real-time."
Having an implanted device that can report biomedical data and apply a therapeutic response closes that loop, he suggests.
Rather than relying on a battery, which isn't something people want in their bodies, the transmitter harvests power by converting radio frequency waves into direct current, using cavity-resonator based magnetic resonance coupling.
Scumbags can program vulnerable MedTronic insulin pumps over the air to murder diabetics – insecure kit recalled [4]READ MORE
"Basically we don't want batteries," said Dr Hansraj Bhamra, a research and development scientist who created the technology, in a phone interview with The Register . "Nobody likes to have big batteries to wear."
According to Bhamra, the transmitter has an energy efficiency of 7 pico-Jule per transmitted digital bit, making it the lowest energy consumption transmitter reported publicly to date. In active-mode, it consumes 70 micro-Watts at 10Mbps while radiating -33dBm of power. In sleep-mode, its power dissipation is 128 pico-Watts.
The Purdue boffins implemented their own wireless communication interface, but they say their chip can easily accommodate Wi-Fi or Bluetooth because it operates at 2.4GHz.
The transmitter, created using 0.18 micrometer CMOS, is made with biocompatible materials like gold, silicon, and a polymer called Parylene. It relies on several innovative techniques to achieve its power efficiency and small size.
For example, it incorporates a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) with NMOS and PMOS cross-coupled transistors that support 2x lower startup current and 10.5db lower phase noise at 1MHz offset than an implementation that only uses standard NMOS or PMOS components.
Irazoqui said testing to determine how long the chip will last hasn't yet been done but he hopes it will run for at least five to 10 years. The device has been implanted in a lab rat but hasn't yet been tried in people.
While the transmitter was designed for glaucoma treatment, Irazoqui suggests it could be used in other scenarios where real-time biomedical interaction is helpful, like heart disease, cancer treatment, or epilepsy. ®
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[1] https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2020/Q3/implantable-transmitter-provides-wireless-option-for-biomedical-devices.html
[2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9129870
[3] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/08/04/purdue_chip.jpg
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2019/06/28/medtronic_insulin_pump_recall/
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: People don't like batteries
I realise you are trolling, but batteries decompose and go flat. Something that doesnt need batteries is therefore good for all sorts of reasons.
Re: People don't like batteries
Good in the medical world, good for science too - think how easy it will be to track bees and butterflies etc now, essentially they will all be carrying Bluetooth phones (LOL).
But there are some other uses of the technology too - spies and professional hackers are going to find this useful...
Re: People don't like batteries
Good in the medical world, good for science too - think how easy it will be to track bees and butterflies etc now, essentially they will all be carrying Bluetooth phones (LOL).
Not sure it quite works like that. The journal paper describes the prototype device's 2.4 mm diameter transmitting antenna and the external receiving antenna as being separated by 20 cm of air and 5 mm of rat skin, so we are not talking long range. The way that the device was powered was also quite interesting:
We developed a resonant cavity based wireless power transfer (WPT) method to deliver power to the device in a freely moving small rodent, where the cavity resonator acts like a cage for the rodent.
Fortunately the authors proposed that "For human use, we can adopt a conceptually similar but cavity-less, magnetic resonance coupled WPT method", so the patient wouldn't have to put their head or face in a small metal box.
Re: People don't like batteries
I realise you are trolling, but batteries decompose and go flat. Something that doesnt need batteries is therefore good for all sorts of reason
The El Reg article doesn't use these justifications, instead it relies on the emotional - a battery "isn't something people want in their bodies,", "Basically we don't want batteries," and "Nobody likes to have big batteries to wear." It leaves the reader to invent reasons for themselves, which you have done.
Unless the reader has expertise in implanted medical electronics, they will not know whether the reasons they invent are valid or not. They are just told "batteries are bad". There are, in fact, hundreds of thousands of people in the UK living happily with batteries permanently implanted inside their bodies, and whilst I only know a few of them none have complained to me about having "big batteries to wear."
Re: People don't like batteries
More to the point, how long before the twitterati 'discover' it causes covid-19?
Re: People don't like batteries
I think that the sentiment is that batteries should be avoided due to the possibility of leakage or the fact that when exhausted, the device would have to be extracted/replaced.
I don't think that the implication here is that the reluctance is due to 5G fruitloopery.
Eye Eye
Grain of sand maybe, implanted in the eye maybe, but it was definitely a good idea to have a hole in the middle of the great big antenna so you can see through it.
Along the lines of: it just takes just 5 lines of code to do x. (Coupled with 5 million lines of support libraries)
I'm still waiting for my Neuromancer* style 'augmented reality' contact lenses....
* IIRC, it's been a while since I read any Gibson.
Just be grateful the internet doesn't require the Headcrash style VR thing that you have to shove up your arse...
Could someone translate that into English ?
" For example, it incorporates a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) with NMOS and PMOS cross-coupled transistors that support 2x lower startup current and 10.5db lower phase noise at 1MHz offset than an implementation that only uses standard NMOS or PMOS components. "
All that sounds very impressive and very technical and I have no doubt that it is important, but I can't for the life of me understand what the hell is going on and why it is important.
Help ?
People don't like batteries
Rather than relying on a battery, which isn't something people want in their bodies, the transmitter harvests power by converting radio frequency waves into direct current, using cavity-resonator based magnetic resonance coupling.
Public ignorance seems a very feeble justification. What are you going to do when the idiots learn that the makers of the silicon chip deliberately doped it with lethal poisons like phosphorus or arsenic, or that it radiates microwaves like 5G base stations do?