---
title: "Georgia Tech Wires Implants Through the Human Body Without Radios"
description: "A Local Network Sends Signals Through Tissue, Raising the Battery Life of In-Body Devices More Than 15-Fold"
author: "rews desk"
published: 2026-09-30T21:06:56Z
modified: 2026-10-01T00:51:54Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/georgia-tech-wires-implants-through-the-human-body-without-r-48a3c7
language: en
tags: ["implants", "neuroscience", "ai", "health", "robotics", "tech"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Georgia Tech Wires Implants Through the Human Body Without Radios

*A Local Network Sends Signals Through Tissue, Raising the Battery Life of In-Body Devices More Than 15-Fold*

By rews desk · September 30, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/georgia-tech-wires-implants-through-the-human-body-without-r-48a3c7

## In brief

- Georgia Tech engineers developed SWANS, sending data between implants via electric pulses through tissue instead of radios
- The system uses a wearable hub, stainless-steel microneedle patch and injectable implants with batteries and sensors or actuators
- Tests in chicken, pork and live rats showed a 10-volt pulse reached over 30cm across pork and 14cm deep, about 10 times Bluetooth's range
- Batteries last more than 15 times longer than conventional implants, and a two-month rat study found no major safety problems
- Limits remain: it moves only a few words of data and has not been tested in large animals or people

Engineers at Georgia Tech have shown that the body’s own tissue can carry data between medical implants, doing the work radios have long handled inside pacemakers, pumps and stimulators.

The system, called SWANS, for Smart Wireless Autonomous Networking System, uses electric pulses sent through skin, fat and muscle rather than the Bluetooth signals that drain batteries and blur out in the body. A study describing it appeared in the journal *Science*. Its batteries last more than 15 times longer than conventional implants because the devices listen without drawing power.

Bluetooth is a bad fit inside the body, said Alex Abramson, a Georgia Tech engineer and a co-author of the study. “If you want an implant to remain in an active state such that it can respond within milliseconds, it’s very difficult to do that with the Bluetooth system,” he said. Active Bluetooth components can cut an implant’s battery life by up to 90 percent. And radio waves fade quickly in tissue; implant-to-implant radio often fails past one centimeter. Radios also need antennas at least five millimeters wide, while a device thinner than three millimeters can go in with a syringe rather than surgery.

SWANS has three parts: a flexible wearable hub that reads sensors and emits pulses up to 12 volts; a patch of stainless-steel microneedles that slips the pulses past the skin’s outer layer; and a set of injectable implants, each with a battery, a switch and either a sensor or an actuator such as a nerve stimulator. Each implant wakes only when a pulse matches its own voltage and length thresholds, tuned with resistors and capacitors — a bit like a person in a noisy room answering only to their own name. “We created all of the smarts in the wearable hub,” Mr. Abramson said, keeping the implants small.

The team tested it in chicken breasts, pork bellies and live rats. One 10-volt pulse produced a readable signal more than 30 centimeters across pork tissue and 14 centimeters deep, about 10 times the reach of Bluetooth. In rats, the hub sat on the stomach and still triggered an implant on the back. In the most elaborate test, strain sensors on a rat’s front legs told the hub when a forelimb moved; the hub then fired a matching pulse that reached an implant on the corresponding hind leg and made it twitch by stimulating the sciatic nerve. A separate pair of implants relayed a signal only when a temperature reading rose above 40 degrees Celsius, 104 degrees Fahrenheit — a fever.

The voltage is on par with what pacemakers and neurostimulators already deliver, Mr. Abramson said, so the team did not expect major safety problems. In a two-month rat study, scar tissue grew around the implants but the engineers raised the voltage within safe limits and kept communicating. The pulses did not set off other nerves, change the heart’s electrical activity or cause more cell death than implants that weren’t electrified.

There are limits. The system can move only a few words of data — “like a temperature reading” — and hasn’t been tested in large animals or people. Mr. Abramson said preliminary large-animal work looked promising.

His target is pairing therapies that today sit apart. “Right now, neurostimulation and drug delivery are completely separate,” he said. “This new communication protocol can be plugged into any of those previous systems.” Because it is agnostic to the sensor or actuator attached, he said, it could connect a drug pump with a nerve stimulator into one network of in-body therapeutics.