Central venous catheters (CVC) are commonly used in clinical practice to improve a patient's quality of life. Unfortunately, there is an intrinsic risk of acquiring an infection related to microbial biofilm formation inside the catheter lumen. It has been estimated that 80 % of all human bacterial infections are biofilm-associated. Additionally, 50 % of all nosocomial infections are associated with indwelling devices. Bloodstream infections account for 30-40 % of all cases of severe sepsis and septic shock, and are major causes of morbidity and mortality. Diagnosis of bloodstream infections must be performed promptly so that adequate antimicrobial therapy can be started and patient outcome improved. An ideal diagnostic technology would identify the infecting organism(s) in a timely manner, so that appropriate pathogen-driven therapy could begin promptly. Unfortunately, despite the essential information it provides, blood culture, the gold standard, largely fails in this purpose because time is lost waiting for bacterial or fungal growth. This work presents a new design of a venous access port that allows the monitoring of the inner reservoir surface by means of an impedimetric biosensor. An ad-hoc electronic system was designed to manage the sensor and to allow communication with the external receiver. Historic data recorded and stored in the device was used as the reference value for the detection of bacterial biofilm. The RF communication system sends an alarm signal to the external receiver when a microbial colonization of the port occurs. The successful in vitro analysis of the biosensor, the electronics and the antenna of the new indwelling device prototype are shown. The experimental conditions were selected in each case as the closest to the clinical working conditions for the smart central venous catheter (SCVC) testing. The results of this work allow a new generation of this kind of device that could potentially provide more efficient treatments for catheter-related infections.

This study presents a comparison between two dipoles acting as representatives of ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification (RFID) circularly polarised (CP) and linearly polarised (LP) tag antennas, respectively. As the CP dipole is derived from the LP dipole, they have equivalent reflection coefficient and radiation efficiency values, allowing the comparison to be focused on polarisation and radiation pattern. Then, a comparison of RFID angular and read range is investigated. This is conducted by combining the interrogation of CP and LP tags emulators by CP and LP readers with regulated power. The emulators are made up of the CP and LP dipoles embedded onto RFID tags with analog front-ends. A methodology is described for measuring the maximum angular and read ranges, involving maximum power allowed by European regulation. A 17.9% extra range is achieved by the CP tag and the CP reader compared to the LP tag with any kind of reader. Furthermore, null cancellation is observed in the former case in the region of interest.

The aim of this paper is to examine the potential of inkjet printing technology for the fabrication of Near Field Communication (NFC) coil antennas. As inkjet printing technology enables deposition of a different number of layers, an accurate adjustment of the printed conductive tracks thickness is possible. As a consequence, input resistance and Q factor can be finely tuned as long as skin depth is not surpassed while keeping the same inductance levels. This allows the removal of the typical damping resistance present in current NFC inductors. A general methodology including design, simulation, fabrication, and measurement is presented for rectangular, planar-spiral inductors working at 13.56 MHz. Analytical formulas, computed numerical models, and measured results for antenna input impedance are compared. Reflection coefficient is designated as a figure of merit to analyze the correlation among them, which is found to be below -10 dB. The obtained results demonstrate the suitability of this technology in the fabrication of low cost, environmentally friendly NFC coils on flexible substrates.

Antenna arrays that incorporate MIMO technology for indoor-outdoor network interconnection on the same terminal, i.e., for DCS 1800. PCS 1900, WCDMA, 3G. 802.11a/b/g. Bluetooth (R). ZigBee (R), WiMAX (TM), and UWB standards, are proposed. Staircase profile printed circuit antenaas, monopoles (PCM). and slots (PCS) with VSWR < 2 bandwidth mainly from 1.12 to 10.1 GHz are previously designed, simulated. constructed, and measured as antenna elements for those arrays. For comparison. prototypes for two-element PCM and PCS MIMO arrays have been constructed and measured, The choice should be made according to the directivity required by the final application and portable device size. For the worst signal interference case, the operational bandwidth ranges from 1.5 to 9.9 GHz and from 1.7 to 11.4 GHz for the PCM and the PCS MIMO arrays, respectively. VSWR is basically below two, average capacity loss 0.32 bps/Hz with respect to the ideal uncorrelated (2,2) case and envelope correlation lower than 20 dB. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 52: 889-895, 2010: Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI:10.1002/mop.25047