A Robust BLE-compatible Wake-up Receiver for Ingestible Device with In-vivo Evaluation

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Wireless Communication Systems
• Gastrointestinal Healthcare

Background:

• Ingestible devices are crucial for gastrointestinal (GI) tract healthcare monitoring.
• Communication challenges exist for devices operating within the human GI tract.
• The 2.4 GHz frequency band is a promising option for wireless communication.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a low-power, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)-compatible wake-up receiver (WuRx) for ingestible devices.
• To address communication signal loss within the GI tract.
• To reduce power consumption for extended device operation.

Main Methods:

• Proposed a BLE-compatible WuRx operating at 2.48 GHz.
• Utilized an LNA-first receiver architecture for enhanced sensitivity (-81 dBm).
• Implemented a low-power single clock chain with Film Bulk Acoustic Resonator (FBAR) and duty cycling.

Main Results:

• The proposed WuRx achieved -81 dBm sensitivity, overcoming GI tract signal loss.
• The design demonstrated an average power consumption of 0.11 µW with a 1% duty cycle.
• In-vivo testing validated the performance of the proposed ingestible device communication system.

Conclusions:

• This work presents the first BLE-compatible WuRx specifically designed for low-power ingestible devices.
• The developed technology significantly enhances communication reliability and power efficiency for GI tract monitoring.
• The system holds potential for a wide range of future medical applications in ingestible healthcare.