A simple folded dipole antenna for medical implant communications at 900 MHz band

Nowadays, implanted medical devices that are using inductive coupling for communication, cannot be used for transmitting medical data in several meters range. This triggers us to study about implantable device systems in order for communications is enabled to be longer range by transmitting wirelessly electromagnetic signal. In this system, the external devices such as home monitoring device or portable equipment will provide the patient more mobility, and the patient or the health care provider could benefit from timely and ease of access to important patient medical information via a networked connection. Due to such advantages, small antennas for implantable devices are very important components in monitoring systems to provide wirelessly communication between a patient and an access point. This paper proposes a simple structure of a folded dipole antenna for an implantable device aimed at wireless patient monitoring applications. The implantable device is assumed to be used with a syringe injection, so the device can be simply embedded into the human body. The antenna is operated in UHF band 924 MHz, which is band of Indonesian frequency allocation for RFID applications. The antenna is small enough in this band with good performances such as S parameter, impedance bandwidth, radiation pattern and gain. The antenna has enough gain for more than 10m range communication with 250 MHz bandwidth (VSWR ≤ 1.5).