Electromagnetic Compatibility Testing of Active Implantable Medical Devices Against Radio Frequency Identification Interrogators

摘要

Over the past few years radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has experienced substantial market growth. Over this time RFID technology has been incorporated into an ever increasing number of applications and products in the everyday environment such as smart card access control systems, inventory tracking, and real-time tracking and location systems. Also, over the last few decades the number of patients requiring active implantable medical devices (AIMD) such as implantable cardiac pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators has been steadily increasing due to advances in pacing technology as well as the aging populace of many countries around the world. If these trends continue, as they are expected to, this will place the AIMD patient at an ever increasing risk of encountering electromagnetic interference (EMI) to their AIMD caused by the electromagnetic fields (EMF) produced by these RFID devices. This highlights the importance of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) testing of these technologies. This research focuses on EMC testing of many different types of AIMDs subjected to EMF emitted by several different, commercially available RFID interrogators. The testing presented here differs from that in the literature in that it is accomplished by use of 3 different in vitro models of the human body rather than a singular model. The use of 3 different models will facilitate a more complete assessment of the risks associated with AIMD patients coming in close contact with RFID technologies. Additionally, EMI mitigation techniques are explored and a novel mitigation technique based on ramped amplitude carrier waves is proposed and tested.