This work presents a type of low noise amplifiers (LNA) that are used for ultrasound imaging systems. To account for the attenuating nature of ultrasound echo signals, a so-called time gain compensation (TGC) circuit is required. By increasing the gain over time, the output dynamic range is decreased, while the switching artifacts are suppressed by the continuous gain control.
The proposed work combines the LNA structure with TGC functionality. This is done, such that the first component in the ultrasound receive chain does not need to be able to handle the full dynamic range of the input signal. The goal is to reduce die area and power consumption costs compared to systems that utilize separate LNAs and TGCs. The combined TGC-LNA consists of a transimpedance amplifier (TIA) with an exponentially-varying feedback resistance. As the feedback network and feed-forward path are separately designed, the design of the TGC functionality and low noise functionality can for a large part be independently designed. The TGC functionality is implemented by an exponentially-varying feedback resistance. This is achieved by means of implementing triode transistors as voltage-controlled resistors. Three branches with differently sized triode devices are required to obtain the full gain range of 40 dB. A two-stage telescopic amplifier realizes the loop amplifier. The bias current of the first stage is a linear function of the total feedback resistance to create a constant unity-gain bandwidth in a power efficient method. Realized in 0.180 μm BCDMOS technology, the combined TGC-LNA amplifies the signals from a Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasound Transducer (CMUT) with a center frequency of 7.5 MHz. The total achieved gain range is 40 dB where the gain varies during a receive period of 100 μs. During the receive period the total harmonic distortion remains below -44 dB and the noise floor is 1.12 pA/√(Hz) at the highest gain setting. Drawing 5.5 mW from a 1.8 V supply and requiring approximately 0.01 mm² die area, the proposed TGC-LNA provides a new method for reducing power consumption and area costs for miniature ultrasound applications. ... Read more

In this report, the design of a subsystem within a localization system for the Bosch DICENTIS wireless conference system will be presented. The localization system will function by means of using acoustic Time Difference Of Arrival (TDOA) measurements to determine the location of each unit connected to the DICENTIS conference system. By unit, the system on the desk of each attendee in the conference, that contains a microphone and speaker is meant. The task of the subsystem presented is to estimate propagation times of transmitted signals between speakers of each unit in the conference system and the microphones of each unit.

The design choice for the type of localization method implemented is based on the gathered information from an initial literature study, the hardware specifications of the Bosch DICENTIS system and the demands for the localization system that were imposed by Bosch. The subsystem will function by transmitting a set of pseudo-random codes, modulated using a type of Frequency Shift Keying (FSK), where two On Off Keying (OOK) signals, modulated at different frequencies, are superimposed. The received and demodulated pseudo-random codes are then correlated with multiple different peak detectors that will correlate with multiple different sets of the transmitted string of pseudo-random codes to gain a higher robustness for the estimated propagation times and a higher accuracy for these estimates. Results show that the the use of multiple different sets of transmitted codes indeed improves the propagation time estimation. The overall system as presented, concerning accuracy and robustness, meets the requirements made by Bosch. However, in future work, optimalization of the system with regard to computation time is required. ... Read more