Cyber-Tooth: Antennified Dental Implant for RFID Wireless Temperature Monitoring Nicoletta Panunzio Pervasive Electromagnetics Lab University of Rome Tor Vergata Rome, Italy nicoletta.panunzio@uniroma2.it Gianluca Ligresti University of Rome Tor Vergata Rome, Italy ligrestigianluca@gmail.com Margherita Losardo University of Rome Tor Vergata Rome, Italy margherita.losardo@libero.it Donato Masi University of Rome Tor Vergata Rome, Italy donatomasi.uni@gmail.com Alessio Mostaccio University of Rome Tor Vergata Rome, Italy alessio.mos97@gmail.com Francesca Nanni University of Rome Tor Vergata Rome, Italy frmach97@gmail.com Giulia Tartaglia University of Rome Tor Vergata Rome, Italy giulia.tartaglia3@yahoo.it Gaetano Marrocco, IEEE Senior Member Pervasive Electromagnetics Lab University of Rome Tor Vergata Rome, Italy gaetano.marrocco@uniroma2.it Abstract—The implantation of devices and prostheses is con- siderably rising in recent years. When an implanted medical prosthesis is equipped with a local wireless sensor, an early- onset identification of possible infections could be achieved. This paper proposes a method to transform a metallic dental implant into an antenna integrating a temperature UHF RFID sensor. A sensorized add-on disk, fully embedded in the dental implant’s crown, collects the external interrogating electromagnetic field and transforms the implant itself into a top-excited dipole. After simulations, a preliminary prototype of the resulting Cyber-Tooth is experimented with a near-filed interrogation by means of an on-cheek antenna. Results are promising for the establishment of a robust backscattering link, as a good margin in the link budget is achievable with further improvements in the tuning of the disk harvester. Keywords—implantable antenna, Radio Frequency Identifica- tion (RFID), smart dental implant, cyber-prosthesis, infection I. I NTRODUCTION Providing a passive implanted medical prosthesis with em- bedded sensor capability and wireless connectivity is a new frontier of the Precision Medicine [1] at the purpose to earn an unprecedented physiological insight of the human body’s health and of the status of the implanted device itself. The Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has been already involved for data ac- quisition and communication through-the-body [2]–[4]. More recently, the innovative trend is to antennify the implanted prosthesis [5] by transforming the device itself, with negligible modifications, into an antenna that collects the electromagnetic field coming from an external reader to power up simple sensor-oriented electronics (i.e. RFID ICs). Fig. 1. Cyber-Tooth concept. The purpose of this paper is to show how to antennify a dental implant to transform it into a wireless local sensor of biophysical parameters of the mouth cavity [6]. For ex- ample, temperature measurements can be exploited to early detect possible post-implantation infections [7], or the onset of specific pathologies such as perimplantitis, mucositis, or gingivitis. The monitoring of the oral cavity is an already explored topic [8]–[11], but, so far, only few studies concerned the implantation of an RFID sensor into a human tooth. The considered RFID links operated at 134.2 kHz in [12], [13] and 13.56 MHz in [14]. Moreover, the insertion of the sensor was invasive since RFID devices, originally made for other applications (e.g. veterinary), were adjusted and implanted in