Toward a High-Throughput Wireless Smart Arena for Behavioral Experiments on Small Animals.

Abstract

This work presents a high-throughput and scalable wirelessly-powered smart arena for behavioral experiments made of multiple EnerCage Homecage (HC) systems, operating in parallel in a way that they can fit in standard racks that are commonly used in animal facilities. The proposed system, which is referred to as the multi-EnerCage-HC (mEHC), increases the volume of data that can be collected from more animal subjects, while lowering the cost and duration of experiments as well as stress-induced bias by minimizing the involvement of human operators. Thus improving the quality, reproducibility, and statistical power of experiment outcomes, while saving precious lab space. The system is equipped with an auto-tuning mechanism to compensate for the resonance frequency shifts caused by the dynamic nature of the mutual inductance between adjacent homecages. A functional prototype of the mEHC system has been implemented with 7 units and analyzed for theoretical design considerations that would minimize the effects of interference and resonance frequency bifurcation. Experiment results demonstrate robust wireless power and data transmissions capabilities of this system within the noisy lab environment.