Provocative Testing for the Assessment of the Electromagnetic Interference of RFID and NFC Readers on Implantable Pacemaker

The purpose of this study is to perform provocative testing for the assessment of the electromagnetic interference (EMI) of radiofrequency identification (RFID) and near field communication (NFC) readers on implantable pacemakers (PMs). Ten PMs were exposed to the electromagnetic field generated by an RFID/NFC reader emulator, in the LF (125 kHz), HF and NCF (13.56 MHz), and UHF (900 MHz) bands. Provocative tests were performed by increasing the field strength beyond the maximum levels allowed for commercial devices. PMs were affected by EMI for all three frequency bands. For the LF RFID, 2/10 PMs when exposed to magnetic field levels typical of commercial devices (100 A/m) and 9/10 PMs at a magnetic field of 500 A/m. For the HF RFID and NFC, 3/10 PMs when exposed to output power levels of magnetic field typical of commercial devices (4 W), and 7/10 PMs at 10 W. For the UHF RFID, 2/10 at output power lever of 2 W, and increasing the output power level up to 20 W did not caused EMI in the other PMs. For the PMs evaluated, the provocative tests performed in this study revealed that the safety margin is narrow in the LF and HF/NFC bands, whereas a fair margin exists in the UHF band.