Antenna systems for implantable medical device telemetry
AssigneeCardiac Pacemakers, Inc.
InventorsJeffrey Von Arx, Prashant Rawat, William Mass
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An implantable medical device system includes an implanted device communicating with an external device via telemetry. The implanted device and the external device each have a telemetry module connected to an antenna system to support a radio-frequency (RF) telemetry link. The antenna system of the external device has a manually or automatically controllable directionality. The controllable directionality is achieved, for example, by using two or more directional antennas, one non-directional antenna and one or more directional antennas, or an electronically steerable phased-array directional antenna.
Claims21
A system for communicating with an implantable medical device, the system comprising:
- an external device adapted to be communicatively coupled to the implantable medical device via radio-frequency (RF) telemetry and adapted to control operation of the implantable medical device and receive data from the implantable medical device, the external device comprising:
- a transceiver;
- a phased-array directional antenna;
- an antenna interface circuit coupled between the transceiver and the phased-array directional antenna;
- and
- a controller coupled to the antenna interface circuit, the controller adapted to control an effective orientation of the phased-array directional antenna.
A method for communicating with an implantable medical device via radio-frequency (RF) telemetry, the method comprising:
- steering a phase-array directional antenna electronically to a plurality of effective orientations;
- receiving an RF signal from the implantable medical device using the phase-array directional antenna at each effective orientation of the plurality of effective orientations;
- analyzing a quality of the received RF signal to produce a set of one or more quality indicators associated with each effective orientation of the plurality of effective orientations;
- and
- selecting an effective orientation from the plurality of effective orientations based on the sets of one or more quality indicators associated with the plurality of effective orientations.
An external system for communicating with an implantable medical device via radio-frequency (RF) telemetry, the system comprising:
- a phased-array antenna;
- means for electronically steering the phased-array antenna to a plurality of effective orientations;
- means for receiving an RF signal from the implantable medical device using the phased-array antenna;
- means for analyzing a quality of the RF signal associated with each effective orientation of the plurality of effective orientations;
- and
- means for selecting an effective orientation based on the quality of the RF signal associated with the each effective orientation of the plurality of effective orientations.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.