Electrical Model of a Wireless mW-Power and Mbps-Data Transfer System Over a Single Pair of Coils

This paper proposes a system to transfer both mW-power and Mbps-data over an inductive link using a single pair of coils. The system is able to handle a wide range of loads by implementing a load adapter block that divides the operation into two phases: a Power Transfer Phase (PTP) and a Data Transfer Phase (DTP). On the one hand, during PTP, a constant amount of power is drawn from the inductive link, regardless of the current demanded by the load. On the other hand, during DTP, the load is powered with external capacitors, allowing the inductive link to be used for data transmission. With this architecture, intended to be used in a neural implant, power can be delivered to a wide range of loads without affecting the uplink/downlink data communication reliability and with no need of extra coils. Thus, the proposed solution permits minimizing the overall size of the neural implant. An electrical mixed-signal model of the system is described and implemented in MATLAB Simulink through Simscape Electrical and Stateflow toolboxes. Simulations performed on the electrical model of the system are shown and discussed.