Abstract
Palliative treatment of neurodegenerative diseases or organ failures includes nerve stimulators and implants. The objective of this article is to suggest a proof of concept for an alternative energy supply to batteries and thus reduce the size and increase the implantability of implants. In this paper, the wireless transfer based on guided waves in bones is studied to power deeply implanted medical devices. After selecting a material able to simulate the acoustic behavior of a bone, we first compute the associated dispersion curves to identify the most efficient guided mode to carry energy along the cortical part of a bone. We then supply energy to the source piezoelectric element using an inductive coupling operating at its resonance frequency. This first concept of hybrid energy relay thus makes it possible to consider improvements for better efficiency for implants without batteries that are difficult to access, such as inside the rib cage or in the skull.