Thesis Code: 22004

Thesis Type: Master Thesis for Telecommunication/Electronic Engineering

 Research Area: Advanced Computing, Photonics and Electromagnetics (CPE)

Requirements

  • MS students in Telecommunication Engineering, Electronic Engineering, or equivalent
  • Basic knowledge of EM fields
  • Experience with Matlab
  • Experience with FPGA programming and simulation (Verilog, VHDL)
  • Good knowledge of basic DSP algorithms

Description
Fat intra-body communication (Fat-IBC) is an innovative technique exploiting the very low electrical conductivity of the fat tissue layer (0.11 S/m) to transmit electromagnetic signals through the human body [1]. This technique is really promising for the implementation of wireless, in-body, bidirectional Brain-Machine-Body connectivity, providing an excellent low-loss communication channel for implantable and wearable networks, such as inter-connect wireless medical sensors [2]. This thesis falls within the EU H2020 FET Open project B-CRATOS (“Wireless Brain-Connect inteRfAce TO machineS”, https://www.b-cratos.eu/) (965044). One of the objectives of this project is to implement a bidirectional wireless connection system between brain and a prosthetic arm, paving the way to the creation of a proof-of-concept, revolutionary untethered brain-machine interface. To verify the feasibility of this system, non-human primates (NHP) will be considered for non-invasive testing.

This thesis aims at the design of wearable aggregators comprising of properly optimized epidermal antennas and modulation-demodulation electronics to communicate simultaneously to/from neural transceivers. Tests on numerical and realistic phantoms are foreseen within the thesis period.


References

  1. B. Asan et al., “Intra-body microwave communication through adipose tissue,” Healthc. Technol. Lett., vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 115-21, 2017.
  2. B. Asan, et al., “Data packet transmission through fat tissue for wireless intrabody networks,” IEEE J. Electromagn., RF, Microw. Med. Biol., vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 43-51, 2017.

Contact: send a resume with attached the list of exams to rossella.gaffoglio@linksfoundation.com specifying the thesis code and title.