[2023] A Programmable High-Voltage Pulser for Miniature Ultrasound Probes

• Ultrasound imaging is based on pulse-echo measurements: a transducer sends an acoustic pulse into the medium, after which the resulting echo signals are recorded to render an image. To achieve sufficient SNR, the transducer typically needs to be excited using high-voltage pulses (amplitudes of tens of volts).
• In this project, we will explore new circuit topologies for generating such pulses using high-voltage MOSFETs, extending our previous work on this topic [1]. An important challenges is to make these pulsers small, so that they can integrated into miniature imaging devices, in spite of the fact that high-voltage MOSFETs tend to be relatively large devices.
• The project includes the design, tape-out and measurement of a prototype chip.

[1] M. Tan, E. Kang, J.-S. An, Z. Y. Chang, P. Vince, N. Sénégond, and M. A. P. Pertijs, “An integrated programmable high-voltage bipolar pulser with embedded transmit/receive switch for miniature ultrasound probes,” IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters, vol. 2, no. 9, pp. 79-82, Sep. 2019.

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Last modified: 2023-02-12