Wide Frequency Characterization of Intra-Body Communication for Leadless Pacemakers

Leadless Cardiac Pacemakers (LCP) have the potential to revolutionize Cardiac Rhythm Management (CRM). Current LCPs can only pace a single location of the heart limiting their use to patients requiring single-chamber stimulation. A Multi-node system of synchronized LCPs could be used in a significantly larger patient population. Synchronization using standard communication techniques involves high power consumption decreasing the longevity of the device. In this work, we investigate Galvanic Intra Body Communication (IBC) as a method to synchronize multi-node LCP systems. First, an accurate computational torso model was used for quasi-static simulations to estimate channel pathloss in the frequency range [40 kHz-20 MHz]. The model was then verified with in-vivo measurements using a novel experimental setup, where two LCP devices were placed in the right atrium, right ventricle and left ventricle. All channels involved in a potential multi-node LCP system were characterized. The orientation of the transducers relative to each other had a great impact on the results, with the attenuation level ranging between 55 dB and 70 dB between the best and worst orientations. The best results were achieved in the MHz range. Coupled with the fact that it does not require additional electrodes, this study suggests Galvanic IBC be superior to conventional communication methods for LCP devices. This analysis defines a methodology for galvanic IBC channel characterization for LCP systems, which is an important step for the design of efficient transceivers for IBC applications. More experiments with larger datasets are needed to bring this method to practice.