A surface acoustic wave ICP sensor with good temperature stability

Background: Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring is very important for assessing and monitoring hydrocephalus, head trauma and hypertension patients, which could lead to elevated ICP or even devastating neurological damage. The mortality rate due to these diseases could be reduced through ICP monitoring, because precautions can be taken against the brain damage. Objective: This paper presents a surface acoustic wave (SAW) pressure sensor to realize ICP monitoring, which is capable of wireless and passive transmission with antenna attached. Methods: In order to improve the temperature stability of the sensor, two methods were adopted. First, the ST cut quartz was chosen as the sensor substrate due to its good temperature stability. Then, a differential temperature compensation method was proposed to reduce the effects of temperature. Two resonators were designed based on coupling of mode (COM) theory and the prototype was fabricated and verified using a system established for testing pressure and temperature. Results: The experiment result shows that the sensor has a linearity of 2.63% and hysteresis of 1.77%. Conclusions: The temperature stability of the sensor has been greatly improved by using the differential compensation method, which validates the effectiveness of the proposed method.