Article

Passive ultrasonic communication link for deep-

tissue sensor implants
Graphical abstract Authors
Umut Can Yener, Alp Timucin Toymus,
Kivanc Esat, Mehdi Alem, Levent Beker

Correspondence
[email protected]

In brief
Yener et al. present a passive, frequency-
based ultrasonic communication system
that enables wireless sensor data
transmission without electronics. Using a
simple piezoelectric antenna and
capacitive sensing, the system
demonstrates precise pressure
monitoring at a clinically relevant depth.
This approach paves the way for
simplified and broadly applicable
implantable monitoring devices.

Highlights
d Passive ultrasonic communication method eliminates the
need for implant electronics

d Enables wireless deep-tissue sensing using a simple

piezoelectric antenna

d Demonstrated real-time pressure monitoring at 5 cm depth

d Compatible with any capacitive implantable sensor for broad

medical applications

Yener et al., 2025, Device 3, 100755

July 18, 2025 ª 2025 The Author(s). Published by
Elsevier Inc.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.device.2025.100755

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Article
Passive ultrasonic communication link
for deep-tissue sensor implants
Umut Can Yener,1 Alp Timucin Toymus,1 Kivanc Esat,2 Mehdi Alem,2 and Levent Beker1,3,4,*
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Koç University, Rumelifeneri Yolu, Sarıyer, Istanbul 34450, Turkey
2Zurich Instruments, Ltd., Technoparkstr. 1, 8005 Zurich, Switzerland
3Department of Biomedical Sciences and Engineering, Koç University, Rumelifeneri Yolu, Sarıyer, Istanbul 34450, Turkey
4Lead contact

*Correspondence: [email protected]
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.device.2025.100755

THE BIGGER PICTURE Wireless communication is crucial for medical implants, enabling real-time moni-
toring of deep-tissue physiological conditions without invasive procedures. However, existing electromag-
netic-wave-based communication methods face limitations due to high signal attenuation, while ultrasonic
methods require application-specific integrated circuits or metamaterial sensors. In this work, the authors
introduce a frequency-based, passive, electronics-free ultrasonic communication method that overcomes
the limitations of existing methods. This technology can aid deep-tissue sensing by allowing non-invasive
data transmission for medical applications such as pressure monitoring, organ health assessment, and
chronic disease management.

SUMMARY

Wireless communication is critical for non-invasive in situ monitoring of vital signs in deep tissues. Electro-
magnetic-wave-based communication methods suffer from high attenuation and limited penetration in bio-
logical tissues. Wireless ultrasonic links can solve these shortcomings but typically require highly customized
and complex designs for the implant electronics or rely on physical changes in implanted metamaterials.
Here, we report a wireless, passive, frequency-based, and electronics-free ultrasonic communication
method for deep-tissue sensor implants. The device consists of a piezoelectric crystal used as the ultrasonic
antenna with a simplified design and can be integrated with any capacitive implantable sensor. We demon-
strate the applicability of the passive communication method using a commercial pressure sensor at a depth
of 5 cm, revealing a sensitivity of 5.83 pF/kPa below 20 kPa.

INTRODUCTION recent implantable devices use wireless power- and data-trans-

ferring technologies such as inductive coupling,14–17 magnetic
Many medical conditions occur deep within the tissue, which resonance coupling,18–20 near-field communication,21–23 and
makes it difficult to monitor and diagnose based on external Bluetooth.24–26 However, the high tissue attenuation and low
measurements.1–3 Medical imaging techniques, such as ultraso- penetration depth associated with electromagnetic (EM) waves
nography and magnetic resonance imaging, are helpful in getting either limit the implantation depth for these devices or necessi-
clinically relevant information from deep tissues non-invasively, tate wired connections between the deeply implanted sensor
but they are not suitable for cases where continuous in situ moni- and subcutaneously implanted antenna (Figure S1), which intro-
toring is necessary.4,5 For such cases, it is possible to monitor duce similar risks associated with wired connections.27,28
signs deep within the body using invasive instruments like cath- Transferring power and data via ultrasound (US) has recently
eters.6–8 Nonetheless, these alternatives are restricted to clinical attracted attention for deep-tissue implantable devices. US of-
settings, require trained personnel, and are costly for the health- fers millimeter (below 1.5 MHz) and submillimeter (above 1.5
care system. Moreover, the invasive nature of these techniques MHz) wavelengths at the diagnostic US frequency range, which
holds the risk of causing discomfort, bleeding, scarring, and bac- achieves better coupling with miniaturized implants when
terial infections.9–13 As an alternative to the clinically available compared to EM waves (wavelength of 25 mm at 2 GHz). Addi-
invasive measurement techniques, medical implants have the tionally, US offers lower attenuation in soft tissues (1.5 dBcm 1
ability to sense signals subcutaneously. Unlike early examples at 2 MHz for US and 10 dBcm 1 at 2 GHz for EM), which results
that use percutaneous wired connections to external devices, in higher penetration depth and less tissue heating.29 For these

Device 3, 100755, July 18, 2025 ª 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. 1
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
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reasons, several studies have demonstrated implantable de- nance characteristics of the whole device44 (Note S1). In partic-
vices with US power and data links30–38 for various applications, ular, the anti-resonance frequency of the system shifts in corre-
including wireless recording of the nervous system and real-time lation with the changes in the capacitive load that is connected to
tissue oxygenation and temperature monitoring. However, most the US antenna (Figures 1C, S2, and S3). At this frequency, the
devices with US data links rely on the use of electronic compo- incoming wave backscatters less, resulting in reduced signal
nents for power harvesting and active digital communication. amplitude captured by the interrogator transducer. This effect
As a result, these devices consist of capacitor elements to store is determined by the acoustic reflection coefficient, as described
energy, rectifier circuits to harvest power, and custom integrated in Note S2. Therefore, exciting the US antenna by an external
circuit (IC) chips to modulate sensor data to the backscattered transducer at frequencies near the anticipated anti-resonance
US waves and switch between powering and data transferring frequency and recording the backscattered US waves result in
modes, which lead to heavily customized and complex implant a spectrum where the minimum point reveals the anti-resonance
electronics design and fabrication. Alternatively, several studies frequency of the implanted system, which can be used to find the
have demonstrated electronics-free ultrasonic communication capacitive load and, consecutively, the deep-tissue measure-
using implanted metamaterials.39–42 However, these devices ments performed by the implantable capacitive sensor
cannot be used for general-purpose communication methods (Figure 1D).
as they rely on application-specific deformations or property The exploded view of the fabricated ultrasonic antenna is pre-
changes on the metamaterials. A recent study has demonstrated sented in Figure 1E. The device consists of a millimeter-scale
a passive US pressure sensing device leveraging the amplitude piezoceramic, a 200-mm-thick flexible electronic board substrate
changes in impedance.43 However, amplitude-based ap- that facilitates the electrical connections, and a biocompatible
proaches have limited applicability as they are highly susceptible polymer coating for chemical and electrical isolation. Moreover,
to disturbances in the acoustic coupling. Therefore, a frequency- an air-backing design approach is adopted by creating an air
based alternative would be an important step toward reliable cavity at the back of the PZT crystal to reduce mechanical damp-
passive ultrasonic communication (PUC). ing, which helps the PZT crystal vibrate more freely. Additionally,
Here, we present a frequency-based PUC method to enable the capacitive pressure sensor is shown soldered to the fabri-
electronics-free data transfer from deep-tissue capacitive cated antenna device. Figure 1F shows the fabrication flow of
sensor implants for real-time monitoring applications. The the device. First, the thin conductive substrate is patterned
implantable device consists of an ultrasonic antenna comprised and cut, then the PZT crystal is soldered on the substrate, and
of a single piezoceramic crystal and an implantable capacitive finally, the device is encapsulated for electrical and chemical
sensor. The PUC method leverages the changes in the reso- isolation.
nance characteristics of the ultrasonic antenna due to the sen- Considering the wavelength for efficient coupling to milli-
sor’s capacitance, which can be captured by an external interro- meter-scale US antenna and frequency-dependent attenuation
gator ultrasonic transducer, thereby eliminating the necessity for of the US in soft tissues,45 the aspect ratio and thickness of
custom IC chips and power-harvesting circuits and considerably the PZT crystal were determined such that the resonance and
simplifying the implant design. The electronics-free communica- anti-resonance frequencies of the thickness mode operation
tion system is demonstrated in vitro with a commercial pressure are around 2 MHz, with a 5 3 7 mm2 footprint and a total volume
sensor and is capable of detecting pressures in a clinically rele- of 16 mm3 (Figure 1G).
vant range. The system presents a promising ultrasonic commu-
nication method for deep-tissue applications that can be inte- Electrical and mechanical device characterization of
grated with any implantable capacitive sensor. the device
Figure 2A shows a detailed Leach electroacoustic equivalent cir-
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION cuit model (ECM) of the ultrasonic antenna where the PZT crys-
tal, backing layer, and acoustic medium are modeled as lossy
Device design and working principle transmission lines. The Leach model was selected due to its
The operating principle of the wireless and PUC method is compatibility with SPICE (also known as [aka] simulation pro-
shown in Figure 1A. The passive link is achieved between an gram with IC emphasis), unlike KLM (Krimholtz, Leedom, and
external interrogator transducer and a piezoceramic US antenna Matthaei), Mason, or Redwood circuit models, which consist of
connected to a capacitive sensor. The interrogator transducer either frequency-dependent transformers or negative-valued
transmits US waves, which travel through the soft tissue and capacitive elements.46–48
get reflected by the implantable US antenna along with the sur- The electrical impedance measurement of the device was
rounding soft-tissue boundaries. The backscattered echo of the compared to the Leach model simulation results in Figure 2B.
incident pulse is captured by the interrogator transducer and The measurement shows an anti-resonance frequency of 2.3
converted to electrical signals to extract the sensor readings MHz, as expected. Although the simulation results match the
wirelessly. measurement at the anti-resonance frequency, resonance pro-
An electrical equivalent circuit can be constructed for the US files do not match, as the thickness resonance of the PZT crystal
antenna and capacitive sensor, which comprises a Butter- mixes with other vibration modes due to using unconventional
worth-van Dyke PZT model and a single capacitor, respectively PZT dimensions49 (see Note S3 for a detailed discussion). Never-
(Figure 1B). Monitored signs cause capacitive changes (CL) in theless, the model-measurement mismatch is not crucial, as the
the implantable sensor. These changes directly affect the reso- key is the precise detection of small changes in the capacitive

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A C
B

E F

Figure 1. Device design and working principle

(A) Schematic of the passive ultrasonic communication method. The ultrasonic antenna is placed on a deep tissue, and the wireless communication link is
established between the device and the external interrogator transducer.
(B) The simple equivalent circuit model of the implanted device. The ultrasonic antenna and capacitive sensor are represented by a Butterworth-van Dyke circuit
and a capacitor, respectively.
(C) Deep-tissue measurements change the sensor capacitance, which directly affects the anti-resonance frequency of the device.
(D) Anti-resonance frequency shifts are detected wirelessly using the passive ultrasonic communication method. The shifts occurring in the frequency spectrum
are translated into wireless sensor readings.
(E) Exploded view of the device showing the patterned flexible conductive substrate, piezoceramic antenna, and air-cavity encapsulation.
(F) The fabrication flow starts with an unpatterned conductive substrate (1), which is cut and patterned using laser micromachining (2). The PZT crystal is then
soldered on the copper traces (3). As a last step, the air cavity is sealed using Kapton tape, and the device is encapsulated using Parylene-C (4).
(G) Optical image of the PUC device on a finger for size comparison before the top electrode is soldered.

load utilizing the anti-resonance frequency shifts. The measured observed around 2 MHz is the thickness vibration mode of the
and simulated effects of capacitive load on the impedance spec- antenna. The acoustic pressure field of the US antenna was
trum are shown in Figures 2C and 2D. Here, the thickness mode measured using a motorized ultrasonic measurement system 3
anti-resonance frequency decreases as the load capacitance cm away from the source (Figure 2G), revealing a 3 dB diam-
connected to the US antenna increases. eter of 9.4 mm.
The measured and simulated anti-resonance frequency shifts
were compared in Figure 2E. The ultrasonic antenna was further Communication link characterization
characterized using an acoustic frequency sweep test, pre- Figure 3A shows the schematic block diagram of the communi-
sented in Figure 2F, showing maximum acoustic pressure at cation hardware system. A duplexer is used to connect the inter-
2.02 MHz, measured by a needle hydrophone 3 cm away from rogator transducer to the input and output channels of a lock-in
the antenna surface, which indicates that the resonance amplifier (LIA), enabling transmit and receive operations from the

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A B

C D E

F G

Figure 2. Electrical and mechanical device characterization of the device

(A) Schematic of the SPICE equivalent circuit model of the ultrasonic antenna in water constructed in LTspice software. The Leach model is used for its SPICE-
friendly nature. The air-backing medium, PZT crystal, and acoustic medium are modeled as lossy transmission lines.
(B) Measured and simulated absolute electrical impedance of the US antenna. The resonance characteristics of the fabricated device do not match fully with the
simulation due to unconventional PZT dimensions.
(C and D) Electrical impedance curves of the measured (C) and simulated (D) US antenna under various capacitive loads. The peaks in the impedance curves are
anti-resonance frequencies.
(E) Anti-resonance frequency shifts for varying capacitive loads. The measurement results show good agreement with the simulation.
(F) Acoustic frequency sweep test results of the US antenna showing peak acoustic pressure level at 2.02 MHz.
(G) Acoustic pressure field of the US antenna is measured by a needle hydrophone at a depth of 3 cm.

same interrogator transducer and, hence, facilitating pulse-echo To confirm the effect of the presence of the US antenna,
measurements. The internal oscillator of the LIA determines the sweep operations were performed with and without the US an-
frequency of the generated excitation signals, which are then tenna in front of the interrogator transducer. The resulting
amplified by a radio frequency (RF) amplifier. To demodulate sweeper spectrum shows a clear valley when the US antenna
the echo signal, the LIA mixes it with a sinusoidal waveform at is in front of the commercial interrogator transducer. In contrast,
the same frequency as the excitation signal and applies the when a thin metal object is placed instead of the US antenna, the
outcome to a low-pass filter, which forms the envelope of the un- previously observed valley disappears (Figure 3C). Moreover,
processed time-domain signal. An unprocessed pulse-echo the effect of the excitation signal duration and amplitude were
waveform and its demodulated form are shown in Figure 3B. Af- analyzed. The results depicted in Figure 3D show that the valley
ter the signal is demodulated, the LIA obtains the average signal of the sweep profile gets more pronounced as the signal duration
level within the demodulator trigger interval. These pulse-echo increases. On the other hand, the amplitude of the excitation
measurements are repeated for each frequency until the entire signal has no noticeable effect on the performance (Figure S4).
frequency interval is swept. The minimum point in the resulting The PUC method was further analyzed for varying interro-
frequency-dependent amplitude spectrum reveals the minimum gator-antenna distances, as shown in Figure 3E. The distance
acoustic reflection point, which is the anti-resonance frequency only slightly affects the communication method results, and it
of the US antenna. can be entirely compensated since the distance information

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B C D

E F G

H I J

Figure 3. Communication link characterization

(A) Schematic of the wireless communication hardware block diagram. The pulse-echo operation is enabled by using a duplexer box, and the signal processing is
handled by a lock-in amplifier.
(B) The raw and demodulated time-domain waveforms of a pulse-echo operation. The lock-in amplifier calculates the signal level of the echo by averaging the
data points within the demodulator trigger interval. The system repeats this process for every frequency within the specified interval and forms a frequency
amplitude spectrum.
(C) The acquired frequency spectrum when the US antenna is in front of the interrogator transducer is compared with the spectrum acquired without the US
antenna (n = 10 measurements).
(D) The effect of the excitation signal length on the communication sweep profile.
(E) Anti-resonance shifts acquired for various antenna-transducer distances.
(F and G) The frequency shifts when capacitive (F) and resistive (G) loads are connected to the US antenna (a 10 3 10 mm2 US antenna was used for E–G, n = 3
measurements).
(H) Frequency spectrums acquired by the passive ultrasonic communication method for varying capacitive load connected to the antenna.
(I) The frequency of the valley (anti-resonance) shifts as the load capacitance increases. Error bars represent the standard deviation (n = 50 measurements).
(J) Violin plot of the wireless communication method showing the precision of the communication link. The mean and standard deviation of the measurements are
shown with white points and black bars, respectively (n = 100 measurements).

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A B

C D E

Figure 4. In vitro demonstration of the PUC system

(A) The schematic of the in vitro experimental setup showing the compressed air connections, the interrogator transducer and US antenna, the integrated
capacitive pressure sensor, and the reference air pressure sensor.
(B) The capacitance plot of the integrated capacitive pressure sensor under varying pressures.
(C) Communication sweep curves for four pressure levels before applying post-processing (n = 40 measurements).
(D) The valley frequency shifts yield a sensitivity of approximately 1.07 kHz/kPa. Error bars represent the standard deviation (n = 40 measurements).
(E) Cyclic performance of the communication method. The pressure in the tank was varied manually by controlling the compressed air valve. The communication
sweeps were recorded in real time with a sample rate of 1 Hz. The anti-resonance shift in the cyclic test was less than anticipated due to transverse and angular
misalignment effects between the transducer and the US antenna.

can be extracted from the time of flight of the pulse-echo mea- In vitro demonstration of the PUC system
surements. Moreover, the effect of resistive loads on the To demonstrate the applicability of the PUC system, a commercial
communication sweep results was analyzed in Figures 4F, 4G, sensor was integrated with the US antenna, which was then placed
and S5. The results suggest that capacitive load is mainly in a custom-designed pressure tank. Figure 4A shows the sche-
responsible for the shifts, and the resistive effects work in matic of the in vitro experimental setup, and Figure S8 shows the
conjunction as described in Note S2. optical image of the setup. The air inlet and outlet ports of the
Figures 3H and 3I show the PUC sweep results for various tank were controlled manually to achieve the desired air pressure,
capacitive loads connected to the US antenna in parallel. As while a reference air pressure sensor was used to monitor the air
the load capacitance increases from 0 to 120 pF, the valley in pressure inside. The tank was partially filled with distilled water
the backscattered US wave spectrum experiences a total shift to facilitate US wave propagation between the interrogator trans-
of 18.56 kHz. The average standard deviation for measurements ducer and the US antenna, which were 5 cm apart.
was calculated to be 1.71 kHz. A second-order polynomial curve The capacitance of the integrated commercial sensor was
fit reveals sensitivities of 236 and 62 Hz/pF around 0 and 120 pF, measured under varying pressure levels (Figure 4B), showing a
respectively. Figure 3J shows a violin plot representing the distri- sensitivity of approximately 5.83 pF/kPa at pressures below
bution of the measured anti-resonance frequencies for three 20 kPa. Using the integrated system consisting of a US antenna
capacitive load values, showing decent precision. and sensor, the air pressure inside the tank was monitored using
The system can operate at a depth of at least 15 cm, as the the electronics-free PUC method and compared to the reference
maximum operating depth test results show in Figure S6. While pressure sensor readings. Figure 4C shows the communication
distance variations have a minimal effect on the operation of the sweeps performed at four different pressure levels before any
passive communication system, misalignments affect the sweep post-processing steps, showing decent separation and preci-
profiles and alter the anti-resonance frequencies detected by the sion. Moreover, Figure 4D shows the mean and standard devia-
interrogator transducer, as shown in Figure S7. tion of the anti-resonance frequencies extracted from the

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communication sweeps. Additionally, the cyclic air pressure side, the delay between the excitation and echo becomes only a
measurement results presented in Figure 4E show the transient few tens of microseconds, which limits the excitation duration to
performance of the PUC method. During the transient experi- prevent overlap. Capturing the echo’s envelope that expends
ment, the proposed system utilized a sweep resolution of over such short durations necessitates fast data conversion,
500 Hz, resulting in a sample rate of approximately 1 Hz, limited demodulation, data transfer, and frequency determination. We
by the hardware, as discussed in the methods section. Overall, anticipate that increasing the speed of these communication
the PUC method results demonstrate decent agreement with steps could lead to better signal quality, boosting the sensing pre-
the pressure measured by the commercial reference sensor, cision and increasing the measurement speed beyond 2 Hz per
as shown in Video S1. frequency sweep. Alternative frequency sensing methods, such
To investigate the effect of soft tissue instead of deionized (DI) as band excitation using frequency chirps and pulse excitations,
water as the acoustic medium, various acoustic media were can increase the frequency sweep rate to as high as 1 kHz, limited
simulated using LTspice software, including water, breast, fat, only by the pulse repetition frequency of the system (Note S5; Fig-
and kidney tissues of the same length (see Note S4 and Figure S9 ure S10). As a preliminary work, chirp excitation was tested with
for details). While the amplitude of the received signal decreases promising results, as shown in Figure S11.
due to more aggressive acoustic attenuation in soft tissues
compared to water, no visible change was observed in the METHODS
anti-resonance frequency shifts.
Ultrasonic antenna fabrication
Conclusion and outlook A 1-mm-thick bulk PZT plate (material APC-855) was purchased
In this work, we presented a simple, wireless, and passive fre- from American Piezo (USA). To achieve the desired dimensions,
quency-based ultrasonic communication method for deep-tis- the PZT plate was diced using a wafer dicer (DAD3221, DISCO,
sue sensor implants. The method utilizes US waves and lever- Japan). The 200-mm-thick flexible conductive substrate, ML-
ages the changes in the resonance characteristics of the 104, was purchased from LPKF. The substrate was patterned,
implanted US antenna in order to facilitate communication at and a 2.6 3 2.6 mm2 area was cut for air-backing design using
greater implantation depths. The system consists of a single pie- an R4 laser machining device (LPKF Laser & Electronics, Ger-
zoceramic US antenna connected to a capacitive sensor in par- many). The top and bottom electrodes of the diced PZT crystal
allel. We demonstrated the performance of the method in vitro at were soldered manually to the copper pads on the patterned
a depth of 5 cm by integrating a commercial capacitive pressure ML-104 substrate using a low-temperature solder (TS391LT,
sensor using hydrostatic pressures ranging from 0 to 105 mmHg, Chip Quik, USA). The air cavity at the back of the PZT
showing that the device can function within the medically rele- crystal was sealed by placing Kapton tape (3M, USA) on the
vant pressure range.50–53 back of the flexible substrate. After electrical connections be-
Compared to existing technologies that use US for establishing tween the US antenna and the capacitive sensor were estab-
wireless communication links,30–43 the PUC method offers several lished, the device was coated with Parylene-C (PPS Labcoater
advantages (see Table S1 for a detailed comparison). First, the Series 100, Germany) for an hour, creating a 900-nm-thick
proposed method features only a single piezoceramic element, conformal encapsulation for electrical and chemical isolation.
used as an ultrasonic antenna, soldered on a flexible conductive
substrate. This enables simpler fabrication without needing any Device characterization
microfabrication processes. Second, the PUC system eliminates The electrical and acoustic characterizations were performed in
the need for custom-designed ICs and other power-harvesting a distilled water environment. An impedance analyzer (MFIA,
electronic components, which simplifies the implant design. Zurich Instruments, Switzerland) was used to acquire the fre-
Finally, the PUC method offers versatile sensor integration since quency-dependent complex electrical impedance of the US an-
any sensor with capacitive sensing behavior (such as capacitive tenna. A 0.5 mm needle hydrophone (Precision Acoustics, UK)
pressure and strain sensors for cardiovascular and ocular applica- was used for the acoustic characterizations. An arbitrary wave-
tions14,54,55) can be used in conjunction with the US antenna. form generator (33521B Waveform Generator, Keysight, USA)
We observed that sweep results are affected by the misalign- was used to excite the US antenna, while a motorized ultrasonic
ments between the antenna and the interrogator transducer. measurement system (UMS Research, Precision Acoustics, UK)
This can be addressed by developing pseudo-smart algorithms controlled the position of the needle hydrophone connected to a
for transducer alignment strategies and generalized calibration digital oscilloscope (DSOX3024G, Keysight). The acoustic pres-
methods that can diminish misalignment susceptibility. In addi- sure field scan was carried out on 25 3 25 grid points with
tion, the US antenna is fabricated from PZT, a material that 0.4 mm increments. Figure 2H shows the interpolated version
contains lead. Although biocompatibility is critical for implantable of the 25 3 25 data. The depth of the operation experiment
systems, these concerns were not prioritized for this proof-of- was performed at a maximum distance of 15 cm due to the phys-
concept work. However, lead-free alternatives like KNN56 can ical limitations of the experimental setup.
be used to fabricate the US antenna in future work. Furthermore,
the antenna can be miniaturized using microfabrication processes Communication method characterizations
to minimize tissue damage risks during implantation, and the The characterization tests of the PUC method were conducted in
sensor and antenna can be fabricated on the same substrate to a distilled water environment using a commercial immersion
achieve a monolithic implantable device. On the data processing transducer (V323-SU, Olympus, USA) as the interrogator

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transducer. The load capacitance on the US antenna was varied Data and code availability
by connecting the antenna to a variable capacitor (PPZN60100, The datasets and code can be obtained by contacting the authors via email.
Passive Plus, USA). The capacitance of the variable capacitor
was measured by an impedance analyzer (MFIA, Zurich Instru- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ments) after each adjustment. The excitation and signal process-
U.C.Y. is supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of
ing operations of the communication sweeps were done by a LIA
Turkey (TUBITAK) through the 2210/A program. A.T.T. is supported by through
equipped with arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) capability the TUBITAK 2232 (grant no. 118C295) program. L.B. acknowledges TUBITAK
(UHFLI, Zurich Instruments). A duplexer box (RDX-6, RITEC, 2232 (grant no. 118C295) and the European Research Council (grant no.
USA) was used to enable the pulse-echo operations. The post- 101043119). We acknowledge the Koç University Nanofabrication and Nano-
processing was done using Python scripts. characterization Center (n2STAR) for access to the infrastructure.

Communication method scheme AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

The signal output channel of the LIA is connected to an RF power
amplifier (F30PV, Pendulum, USA) whose output port is connected U.C.Y. and L.B. conceived the research idea. U.C.Y. designed, fabricated, and
characterized the ultrasonic antenna, conducted experiments, and analyzed
to the duplexer box via a BNC cable. The receiver signal port of the
the data. A.T.T. contributed to the experiments and technical discussions.
duplexer is directly connected to the LIA input signal channel. K.E. and M.A. contributed to signal processing. L.B. acquired funding and
The pulse-echo scheme is realized using the LIA, which facil- directed the research activities. All authors contributed to the manuscript
itates an AWG module to create 12-ms-long modulated electrical writing.
pulses to drive the interrogator transducer. An internal oscillator
determines the modulation frequency. The device’s echo is de- DECLARATION OF INTERESTS
modulated using this oscillator as well. This scheme allows
sweeping the oscillator frequency while keeping the measure- L.B. is the inventor of the patent (WO2023018388A1) that covers the funda-
ment and pulse modulation in sync. The frequency sweep is per- mental principles of the passive communication method.
formed in the vicinity of the anticipated anti-resonance fre-
quency. At each frequency point, the signal is demodulated SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION
using a fourth-order low-pass filter with 200 kHz cutoff fre-
quency. The resulting signal is the envelope of the modulated Supplemental information can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
device.2025.100755.
signal corresponding to the backscattered wave, as shown in
Figure 3B. The control software calculates the average ampli- Received: October 15, 2024
tude and plots it against the frequency. The sweep results are Revised: December 10, 2024
continuously fed into a Python script, which applies a 1D Accepted: March 5, 2025
Gaussian filter to smooth the spectrum before outputting the fre- Published: March 28, 2025
quency of the anti-resonance valley (Figure S12).
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RESOURCE AVAILABILITY
0000000303.

Lead contact 6. Pelosi, P., Aspesi, M., Gamberoni, C., Chiumello, D., Severgnini, P., Og-
Further information and resource requests should be directed to the corre- gioni, R., Tulli, G., Malacrida, R., and Chiaranda, M. (2002). Measuring
sponding author, Levent Beker ([email protected]). intra-abdominal pressure in the intensive care setting. Intensivmed 39,
509–519. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00390-002-0312-9.
Materials availability 7. Abraham, M., and Singhal, V. (2018). Intracranial pressure monitoring.
The materials used in this study are commercially available and can be pur- J. Neuroanaesth. Crit. Care 2, 193–203. https://doi.org/10.4103/2348-
chased from the sources listed in the methods section. 0548.165039.

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