Reduced-Size Antenna for Leadless Cardiac Pacemaker

Abstract

The advancement in technology led to the development of leadless cardiac pacemaker (LCP) systems that resolved the issues that arise due to the use of leads in the conventional pacemakers (CP). However, the compact size of the LCP system also requires a miniaturized antenna that can fit inside the limited space of the LCP. Therefore, this study was conducted to propose and design a reduced-size antenna that operates at 2.4 GHz. An implantable antenna with a footprint of 4.00  5.00 0.50 mm was designed using CST Microwave Studio (student version). An LCP system was integrated with the antenna and simulated inside the heart tissue model to evaluate the performance of the antenna. Based on the S₁₁ parameter, the antenna was further optimized, and the coaxial-feed cable position was offset until the impedance matching was achieved for the resonant frequency to be at 2.4 GHz. The antenna exhibited good performance with a S₁₁ of less than -10 dB at 2.4 GHz. In addition, the proposed antenna satisfies the requirements of LCP with limited space. Therefore, the proposed antenna is envisaged to be implemented for LCP systems.