A Novel Bone Conduction Implant - Analog Radio Frequency Data and Power Link Design
Paper in proceeding, 2012

Patients who are suffering from conductive hearing loss and single sided deafness cannot sometimes be rehabilitated by conventional air conduction hearing aids. Today, percutaneous Bone Anchored Hearing Aid (BAHA) is an important alternative for such patients. BAHA uses a titanium implant which penetrates the skin and can cause skin infection, skin redness and requires life-long commitment of care every day. A novel Bone Conduction Implant (BCI) is designed as an alternative to the percutaneous BAHA, because it leaves the skin intact. It comprises an external audio processor and an implanted unit called the BCI Bone Bridge. Sound is transmitted to the implant via an inductive radio frequency (RF) link through the intact skin using amplitude modulation. This paper presents an analog RF data and power link design as a first implementation for the BCI. The RF link is designed to operate in critical coupling to transmit maximum power to the implant. Maximum Power Output of the BCI was measured at 2 mm skin thickness and was found to be 105 dB relative to 1 µN at the transducer resonance frequency. This output force is fairly robust in 2 mm to 6 mm skin thickness range.

implantable hearing devices

RF data and power link

Bone Anchored Hearing Aid

Bone Conduction Implant

implantable transducer.

Author

Hamidreza Taghavi

Chalmers, Signals and Systems, Signal Processing and Biomedical Engineering

Bo Håkansson

Chalmers, Signals and Systems, Signal Processing and Biomedical Engineering

Sabine Reinfeldt

Chalmers, Signals and Systems, Signal Processing and Biomedical Engineering

9th IASTED International Conference on Biomedical Engineering, BioMed 2012; Innsbruck; Austria; 15 February 2012 through 17 February 2012

327-335
978-088986909-7 (ISBN)

Areas of Advance

Life Science Engineering (2010-2018)

Subject Categories

Other Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

DOI

10.2316/P.2012.764-054

ISBN

978-088986909-7

More information

Created

10/7/2017