An Energy-Efficient High-Voltage Pulser for High-Frequency Ultrasound Medical Applications
Yidi Xiao (Student TU Delft)
Hassan Rivandi (TU Delft - Bio-Electronics)
Tiago L. Costa (TU Delft - Bio-Electronics)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Emerging ultrasound (US) biomedical applications, from battery-powered US imaging to US neuromodulation, demand wearable form factor and power-efficient US transmitters. Fulfilling these specifications demands a high-frequency and power-efficient 2D US phased-array transmitter directly integrated with the ASIC. In such systems, pulsers are the most power-hungry block owing to delivering high-voltage pulses to the US transducers. This paper presents a power-efficient high-voltage pulser to drive a 2D phased-array of piezoelectric transducers. The proposed pulser employs two storage capacitors per channel to save the charge of the US transducer and reuse it in the next phase. Moreover, utilizing a stack of two low-voltage CMOS transistors enables delivering 15-MHz pulses with an amplitude of 10 V to the piezoelectric transducers. The proposed pulser is designed and simulated in 180 nm CMOS technology. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed pulser reduces the power consumption by 40.9% compared to the conventional class D pulser.