Pyungwoo Yeon received the Third Place Best Paper Award at the IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS 2017), held October 19-21 in Turin, Italy. Yeon is a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).

The title of Yeon's paper is “Millimeter-Scale Integrated and Wirewound Coils for Powering Implantable Neural Microsystems,” which he co-wrote with his Ph.D. advisor and ECE Professor Maysam Ghovanloo, who leads the GT-Bionics Lab.

In this paper, which is a joint collaboration with a group at Imperial College London, Yeon explores the next generation brain machine interfaces that are targeting millimeter-scale implants that are freely floating and completely wireless. It is essential that these systems achieve good power transmission efficiency, but also be compatible with microsystem technologies.

This paper presents two schemes for implementing mm-scale coils for power delivery by electromagnetic coupling – on-chip and wire-wound. This work develops the relevant analytical models, equivalent simulation models, and reports results using both finite element modeling (simulation) and experimental measurement of the fabricated devices. Finally, the paper authors compare results and discuss the relative merits of each approach.

The IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS) serves as a premier international forum for presenting the interdisciplinary research and development activities at the crossroads of medicine, life sciences, physical sciences, and engineering that will shape tomorrow’s medical devices and healthcare systems. It brings together researchers, designers, clinicians, and engineers from industry, academia, and government to disseminate the latest cutting-edge research results and innovative solutions for today’s complex health problems at the frontiers of biomedical engineering, life sciences, and circuits and systems.