BCIwiki (bciwiki.com) — A transdural wireless link can carry data out of an intracortical brain-computer interface at up to 500 Mbps, according to a study by researchers at imec, Eindhoven University of Technology and Erasmus MC published in Communications Engineering on September 1, 2026.
High-density microelectrode arrays resolve neural activity in fine spatial and temporal detail, but the resulting surge in data is hard to move wirelessly from a miniaturized implant under limits on power, bandwidth, heat dissipation and device size. The team’s architecture has two stages: a transdural galvanic-coupled body channel communication (BCC) link from a free-floating microelectrode array to an intracranial unit, followed by a transcutaneous link to an external unit. The paper focuses on the transdural stage, which the authors describe as compact, wideband and energy-efficient.
In phantom tests and ex vivo experiments on a human cadaveric head specimen, the link reached 500 Mbps with 20% duty cycling and bit error rates below 10⁻⁵. A send-on-delta encoder (SODA) built into the system compresses data by up to 11.4x, which the researchers say reduces thermal load enough to meet safety guidelines. Brain-on-a-chip models showed the system did not evoke unintended neural activity, a result the authors say supports the platform’s long-term viability for high-resolution intracortical BCIs.