Electro-Quasistatic Animal Body Communication for Chronic Untethered Rodent Biopotential Recording

TL;DR

This paper introduces Animal Body Communication (ABC), a novel low-power wireless method for chronic biopotential recording in rodents, utilizing the body as a communication medium to significantly reduce power loss and improve efficiency.

Contribution

It develops the first theoretical models and circuitry for animal body communication, enabling low-power, high-accuracy biopotential transmission in rodents.

Findings

Achieved >99% correlation accuracy with traditional methods

Reduced power consumption by 50 times

Demonstrated effective in-vivo transmission of ECG signals

Abstract

Continuous multi-channel monitoring of biopotential signals is vital in understanding the body as a whole, facilitating accurate models and predictions in neural research. The current state of the art in wireless technologies for untethered biopotential recordings rely on radiative electromagnetic (EM) fields. In such transmissions, only a small fraction of this energy is received since the EM fields are widely radiated resulting in lossy inefficient systems. Using the body as a communication medium (similar to a 'wire') allows for the containment of the energy within the body, yielding order(s) of magnitude lower loss than radiative EM communication. In this work, we introduce Animal Body Communication (ABC), which utilizes the concept of using the body as a medium into the domain of chronic animal biopotential recording. This work, for the first time, develops the theory and models for animal body communication circuitry and channel loss. Using this theoretical model, a sub-inch$^3$, custom-designed sensor node is built using off the shelf components which is capable of sensing and transmitting biopotential signals, through the body of the rat at significantly lower powers compared to traditional wireless transmissions. In-vivo experimental analysis proves that ABC successfully transmits acquired electrocardiogram (EKG) signals through the body with correlation accuracy >99% when compared to traditional wireless communication modalities, with a 50x reduction in power consumption.