Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Moscow, Russia, August 1923, 2012 445

Wireless Power System for Implantable Heart Pumps Based on Energy Injection Control
H. Y. Leung1 , D. M. Budgett1 , D. McCormick1 , and A. P. Hu2
1

Auckland Bioengineering Institute, University of Auckland Auckland 1142, New Zealand 2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand

Abstract Inductive power transfer (IPT) for powering high power implantable devices, such
as total articial hearts and heart assist devices, greatly reduces the risk of infection by eliminating the driveline cable which otherwise needs to puncture the skin to provide power. The operating conditions are demanding in terms of the power level, a wide range of coupling variations, restrictions on heat generated and resultant temperature rise in the surrounding tissue. This paper presents a wireless power transfer system which satises the requirements for powering a high power implant. The system consists of a half-bridge energy injection circuit which is fully soft-switched. No extra switching or power components are required to regulate the power ow. This is achieved by injecting energy into the tank when required, and allowing the resonant tank to free oscillate when power is sucient. Feedback from the implanted device is provided via a radio link completing the feedback control loop. The external and internal power transfer coils are air-cored and have a maximum diameter of 75 mm and thickness of 7 mm including the biocompatible encapsulation, making a light and compact transcutaneous energy transfer (TET) system. The presented system is capable of delivering over 15 W to the implanted load over a wide range of coupling variation (k = 0.15 to 0.3) which corresponds to 20 mm to 10 mm coil separation. The system has achieved an end to end power eciency of 78.7% to 82.2%. 1. INTRODUCTION

This paper presents a standalone Transcutaneous Energy Transfer (TET) system for powering high power implantable medical devices such as articial heart pumps. Current state-of-the-art heart pumps require a level of power consumption that ranges from 5 to 15 W [1]. Such power levels are too demanding for implantable batteries for a heart pump which must run continuously. Thus electric power must be externally provided either with a percutaneous cable (punctures through the skin) or via a transcutaneous (through unbroken skin) method. Inductive power transfer (IPT) is a well known technology and is also very promising for delivering power to implantable devices. In this paper, a TET system based on a half-bridge energy injection resonant converter was designed for powering an implantable heart pump. A TET system, when used by a patient, must be able to adapt to the prevailing coupling conditions as the separation of the coils depends on the tissue thickness of the patient and surgical placement. In addition to this the system should be able to tolerate slight changes in coupling, due to movement from physical activity and repetitive activity such as respiration. Size and weight of the power transfer coils is another important factor, especially for the implanted coil which has to be thin enough in order for it to be placed just under the skin. Finally the heat generated by the power transfer coils must not cause damage to the surrounding tissue.
2. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

A high level block diagram of the TET system is shown in Figure 1. It consists of an external primary power converter with its power delivery coil L1 and an internal secondary power receiving coil L2 with its power conditioning circuit. Resistor R2 represents the load of the implantable device. Power regulation is performed on the primary side with an energy injection converter which drives the power delivery coil which is part of a series resonant tank.
2.1. Resonant System and Power Transfer Coils

The transfer of power is achieved through the use of two LC resonant circuits, where the coils are mutually coupled together via the interaction of oscillating magnetic elds. The strength of the coupling is determined by a coupling co-ecient k . In this particular application the coupling k may vary quite signicantly during practical usage.

446

PIERS Proceedings, Moscow, Russia, August 1923, 2012

S1 C1 C2 Rectifier Vin S2 L1 L2 R2

<M>

MOSFET Gate Drive

C.T. Current limit

ZCS logic

Wireless RX

Wireless TX

Figure 1: High level block diagram of presented TET system.

(a)

(b)

Figure 2: (a) Primary and (b) secondary power transfer coils.

Since the energy injection converter is essentially a voltage-fed half bridge converter the primary LC resonant tank topology must be a series tuned tank, as a parallel tuned tank has voltage source type characteristics and must be driven by a current-fed converter [2]. The conguration of the secondary resonant tank is also series tuned; this was chosen as this makes the secondary resonant current the same as the load current. The most ideal shape of the power transfer coils is as at and small as possible. The requirement of it being at is because the secondary coil has to be implanted inside the body and near the surface of the skin, a at coil allows the coil to be implanted just under the skin secured by nearby bone mass (such as on top of the rib cage), without creating a large extrusion. The coils used in the system are shown in Figure 2, they were made by winding 2 mm diameter Litz wire in a two layer pancake conguration creating a 4 mm thick coil, encapsulating the coils with biocompatible silicon brought the thickness to 6 mm. The diameter of the implanted coil including encapsulation is 55 mm and the external coil is 65 mm. The weight of the coil is also important, as a heavy coil would induce more discomfort, thus no ferrite core was used in our coils and the primary and secondary coils weighed 60 g and 45 g respectively. The size of the coils were designed so a maximum displacement of 20 mm of the coils either vertical or horizontally could be tolerated without their coupling co-ecient dropping below k = 0.15. The inductances of the primary and secondary coils were 14.2 H and 11.45 H respectively. The tuning capacitors of the primary and secondary capacitors were not selected to make the individual primary and secondary tanks resonate at a nominal resonant frequency. As the coupling variation during operation is large (k = 0.15 to 0.3) it is important to analyze how the impedance of the system changes across all coupling conditions and select capacitor values which will minimize loss and avoids any frequency bifurcation behavior within the operating coupling range. The capacitor values were selected using an optimisation process previously described [3], the primary and secondary capacitances used in this setup are 12 nF and 16 nF respectively.

Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Moscow, Russia, August 1923, 2012 447 2.2. Energy Injection Converter

A half-bridge energy injection converter [4] was used in our TET system and is depicted in Figure 3. This converter was chosen due to a low component count, ability to implement soft-switching and it provides complete power ow control without additional power stage components. The half-bridge energy injection converter consists of two operating states; injection state and free oscillation state. During the injection state the high side switch is on while the low side switch is o, connecting the resonant tank to the DC input source, thus injecting energy into the tank. During the free oscillation state the low side switch is on while the high side switch is o, which connects the resonant tank together allowing it to free oscillate, damped by its own or any reected impedance. In order for the system to be soft-switched the converter must change states during the zero crossings of the resonant current, this is achieved using a current transformer on the primary resonant track. The injection state can only occur during the positive phase of the resonant current as the power source is DC and can only provide power in one direction, but free oscillation state can occur in both phases of the resonant current.
2.3. Feedback and Control

A current limit controller was used to control power ow. The peak of the resonant current during the negative current phase is compared against a current limit. If the peak is below the limit, then an injection state will occur during the next positive current phase; else if the peak is above the limit, the converter will stay in free oscillation state during the next positive current phase. This current limit is the output of a proportional-integral controller which operates on the error of the output voltage with the desired output voltage. The output voltage at the secondary is received through a low power 2.4 GHz radio link. Control of the system is achieved completely onboard with discrete analog components and no external controllers were used, hence it is a standalone system.
3. RESULTS

The performance of the TET system was characterized at a load of 10 ohms. The control system was set to regulate the output voltage to 12.5 V corresponding to an output power of 15 W being available to drive the heart pump and charge any internal battery. Power measurements were recorded at dierent separations between the power transfer coils, this separation refers to the displacement of the coils with their centers concentric and radii parallel to each other. For this set of coils a 5 mm separation corresponds to a coupling co-ecient of k = 0.41 and a 20 mm separation corresponds to a coupling co-ecient of k = 0.15. Note that coupling is not linearly proportional to separation. We have chosen 10 mm as a minimum coil separation to accommodate encapsulation, implantation, tissue, coil holder and clothing contributions. The output power vs. separation relationship is shown in Figure 4, it can be seen that the system is only able to reach desired output voltage when the separation is greater than 10 mm (or k < 0.3). It is unintuitive that output power decreases at close coupling. Figure 5 plots the injection percentage (power ow percentage) of the energy injection converter vs. vertical separation to help explain the eect of close coupling. Figure 5 shows that more energy injection is required when coupling is good than when coupling low, this

Injection State C1 I1 VIN

Positive current phase only

Free oscillation State C1

Positive

L1

or Negative current phase

L1

Figure 3: States of a half-bridge energy injection converter.

448
15 14 Voltage (V) 13 12 11 10 5 10 15 20 Separation (mm) 25 30

PIERS Proceedings, Moscow, Russia, August 1923, 2012

100 80 Injection % 60 40 20 0 5 10 15 20 Separation (mm) 25 30

Figure 4: Output voltage vs. separation.

85

Figure 5: Injection percentage vs. separation.

100

80 Efficiency %
Efficiency %

95

75

90

70

85

65 5 10 15 20 Separation (mm) 25 30

80 5 10 15 20 Separation (mm) 25 30

Figure 6: Eciency vs. separation.

Figure 7: Theoretical maximum eciency vs. separation.

is because the reected impedance seen by the converter is greater when coupling is good. Thus it takes more energy injections to sustain the same resonant current. If operation at higher coupling levels is desired, dierent tuning capacitors would be selected to allow the desired output voltage to be reached at the cost of inferior eciency at the low coupling end. A higher input voltage can also improve operation at high coupling, however high DC voltages come with safety issues and cause greater stress on the power components. The end to end power eciency vs. vertical separation is shown in Figure 6. Also a simulation of the resonant system was performed in order to nd the theoretical maximum eciency of the system when only the losses of the coils and resonant capacitors are taken into account; the result of this is shown in Figure 7. In Figure 6, it can be seen that for the designed separation range of 10 mm to 20 mm, the eciency steadily decreases from 82.2% to 78.7%. This 3.5% decrease in eciency across the coupling change of k = 0.3 to 0.15, is reective of the theoretical maximum eciency drop of 3.3% across the same coupling range. Thus the energy injection converter maintains almost constant eciency throughout its control range.
4. CONCLUSION

This standalone TET system accommodates the power conditions applicable for an implantable heart pump. A half-bridge resonant converter was used to drive the power transfer coils, and power ow control was performed on the external primary side via feedback through wireless communication. The system was able to provide 15 W of power across a coil separation of 10 mm to 20 mm corresponding to a coupling change of k = 0.3 to 0.15; with a maximum end to end eciency of 82.2% and a minimum eciency of 78.7%. It has also been demonstrated that the energy injection converter retains it eciency across a control range of 100% to 25% energy injection, making it ideal for TET systems which need to operate across a wide range of coupling. The presented power transfer coils and circuitry are also suciently compact for implantation.

Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Moscow, Russia, August 1923, 2012 449
REFERENCES

1. Str uber, M., A. L. Meyer, D. Malehsa, C. Kugler, A. R. Simon, and A. Haverich, The current status of heart transplantation and the development of articial heart systems, Dtsch Arztebl Int., Vol. 106, 471478, 2009. 2. Hu, A. P., Selected resonant converters for IPT power supplies, Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineeing, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, 2001. 3. Leung, H. Y., D. M. Budgett, and A. P. Hu, Minimizing power loss in air-cored coils for TET heart pump systems, IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems, Vol. 1, 8, 2011. 4. Li, H. L., A. Hu, and G. A. Covic, Development of a discrete energy injection inverter for contactless power transfer, 3rd IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications, ICIEA 2008, Singapore, 2008.