Electromagnetic interference in cardiac implantable electronic devices due to dynamic wireless power systems for electric vehicles

Electric vehicles (EV) are now considered the present and future of road transportation to reduce the emission of CO2 into the environment and thus progressively reduce global warming and climate change. However, EVs currently have some weaknesses such as the available range of battery-powered EVs and the recharging time of the batteries. To overcome these problems, some electrification projects have been proposed for road transportation such as the dynamic wireless power transfer (DWPT), where an EV charges as it moves along an electrified lane using magneto-resonant coupling between short tracks mounted on the road pavement and the vehicle’s onboard pickup coils. While the results are encouraging from an electrical point of view, there is concern regarding the magnetic field in the environment produced by the DWPT coils, which can produce adverse health effects in humans and electromagnetic interference (EMI) in electronic devices. The latter also includes implantable medical devices (IMDs) and in particular cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs), which may be present among vehicle passengers and pedestrians in areas surrounding the vehicle. The aim of this study is the numerical analysis of the EMI produced by a DWPT system in CIEDs with leads such as pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), etc. EMI is mainly produced by the incident magnetic field and the induced voltage at the input port of a CIED; therefore, in this work the magnetic field levels produced by a DWPT system operating at 85 kHz are calculated first, then the voltage at the input port of a pacemaker is evaluated as that produced by the magnetic field incident on the loop surface formed by a lead implanted in the venous system. According to ISO 14117 standard, it is assumed that the lead loop is planar, semicircular in shape and with an area equal to 225 cm2. Since the lead can be placed anywhere where a human can be and with any orientation, an innovative and sophisticated roto-translation algorithm is proposed to find the maximum value of the peak-to-peak induced loop voltage in the most critical regions inside the vehicle cabin and beside the vehicle near the DWPT coils. The preliminary results obtained show that there is no EMI risk inside the vehicle for the passengers with CIEDs, while some concern for pedestrians is due to the induced voltage at the input port of a CIED with unipolar leads which can exceed the ISO 14117 limit in the region next to the vehicle.