A Contemporary Survey on Energy Harvesting Techniques for Next Generation Implantable Bio-Medical Devices

Providing a constant and perpetual energy source is a key design challenge for implantable medical devices. Harvesting energy from the human body and the surrounding is one of the possible solutions. Delivering energy from outside the body through different wireless media is another feasible solution. In this paper, we review different state-of-the-art methods that process “in-body” energy harvesting as wellas “out-of-body" wireless power delivery. Details of the energy sources, transmission media, energy harvesting, coupling techniques and the required energy transducers will also be discussed. The merits and disadvantages of each approach will be presented. Different types of mechanisms have very different characteristics on their output voltage, amount of harvested power and power transfer efficiency. Therefore different types of power conditioning circuits are required. Issues of designing the building blocks for the power conditioning circuits for different energy harvesting or coupling mechanisms will be compared.