A Novel 3-D Printed Headstage and Homecage based WPT System for Long-term Behavior Study of Freely Moving Animals

Abstract

Wirelessly powered neural stimulation and recording system is crucially important for the long-term study of the animal behaviors for the treatment of chronic neuropathic diseases. Headstage based neural implant is one of the popular methods to stimulate the neurons. In this work, a homecage based wireless power transfer (WPT) system is developed to supply power to a 3-D printed headstage which consists of a receiver (RX) coil, a rectifier and a light-emitting diode (LED) for optogenetic stimulation. A multilayer transmitter (TX) coil is designed to provide power over the 28.5 cm × 18 cm homecage area. The proposed system is able to achieve a maximum of 41.7% efficiency at 5 cm distance through air media using less number of headstage resonators compared to the other state-of-the art works.