Patent ID: 7319903

Claim:
A telemetry system for an implantable medical device and an external device, comprising: an antenna, an RF transceiver, and a controller incorporated into each of the implantable and external devices, wherein the RF transceiver is interfaced to the controller in the implantable device to enable the RF transmitter and receiver to be powered up or down; wherein the implantable device and external device are programmed with a real-time data transfer protocol in which real-time data collected by the implantable device is transmitted to the external device in response to periodic polling requests by the external device; a wakeup timer incorporated into the implantable device; wherein the implantable device is programmed to power down its RF transceiver for a predetermined time interval as measured by the wakeup timer upon receipt of the sleep command from the external device; and, wherein the implantable and external devices are programmed such that data is transmitted from the implantable device to the external device using a handshaking protocol which includes an RRTS frame from the external device, an RTS frame from the implantable device, a CTS frame from the external device, a data segment frame from the implantable device, and an ACK frame from the external device, and further wherein the sleep command, if present, is contained in the ACK frame.