Date of Award

5-2018

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering

Department

Biomedical Engineering

Committee Chair

Pedro Irazoqui

Committee Member 1

Chi Hwan Lee

Committee Member 2

Hugh Lee

Abstract

The needs for electrotherapy, using electrical devices, are significantly increasing, due to limitations that pharmaceutical therapies may have, such as unignorable side effects and meager side effects on a multitude of cardiovascular and neurological diseases. To research on electrotherapy using an implantable electronic module, a miniature, wireless, and closed-loop implantable device, called "Bionode", has been developed at Center for Implantable Device, directed by Dr. Pedro Irazoqui. Bionode4.1, the most recent version of the Bionode, is a device that consists of three different printed circuit boards(PCB), including a wireless communication system, an inductive power receiving system, and a two-channel recording system with a stimulator that has an ability to output a biphasic constant current stimulation. However, a few issues were brought to the surface during the fabrication process and in-vivo animal tests: 1) Unwanted data loss due to the failure of communication between the device and the Base Station, 2) stimulator's imbalanced output with glitches and noise, 3) structural complexity that made debugging and constructing the device difficult, 4) device configuration, which could not be customized for the specific applications. These limitations found in Bionode 4.1 led to the development of the new version of Bionode, "Bionode 5.0". In order to increase the fidelity of the data transmission, a meandered inverted F trace antenna, which can cover the 2.4 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) radio band, was designed and implemented in the wireless communication system of the Bionode 5.0. In order to resolve the stimulation issue, the old stimulator built in Bionode 4.1 was replaced with an upgraded stimulation circuitry that consists of the additional feedback system and the switches for suppressing the imbalanced pulses and controlling the unwanted glitches on the output. Re-optimizing the overall floor plan of the device and utilizing a new type of board-to-board connector solved the issues related to the structure and customizability. As a result, Bionode 5.0 with the smaller volume and the larger utilizable surface area resolved the issues that Binode4.1 had and would potentially allow the users to widely utilize the new version in various applications for the medical research.

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