Department of Microelectronics
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science

MSc I. Bellouki

Researcher
Electronic Instrumentation (EI), Department of Microelectronics

Biography

Imad was born in Arnhem, The Netherlands in 1999. He received his B.Sc degree in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology in 2021. After which he pursued a M.Sc degree in Electrical Engineering specializing in Microelectronics and graduated in 2023. For his MSc thesis, he worked on a programmable energy recycling resonant pulser for miniature wearable ultrasound applications. Imad is currently a researcher working in the Smart Ultrasound group on energy-efficient ultrasound ASIC design targetting wearable/portable imaging applications. 

Publications

  1. An Amplitude-Programmable Energy-Recycling High-Voltage Resonant Pulser for Battery-Powered Ultrasound Devices
    Bellouki, Imad; Rozsa, Nuriel N. M.; Chang, Zu-Yao; Chen, Zhao; Tan, Mingliang; Pertijs, Michiel A. P.;
    IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits,
    pp. 1--12, 2024. Early Access. DOI: 10.1109/JSSC.2024.3494536
    Abstract: ... This article presents an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for battery-powered ultrasound (US) devices. The ASIC implements a novel energy-efficient high-voltage (HV) pulser that generates HV transmit (TX) pulses directly from a low-voltage (LV) battery supply. By means of a single off-chip inductor, energy is supplied to a US transducer in a resonant fashion, directly generating half-period sinusoidal HV pulses on the transducer, while consuming substantially less energy than a conventional class-D pulser. By recycling residual reactive energy from the transducer back to the input, the energy consumption is further reduced by more than 50%. The autocalibration techniques are leveraged to deal with tolerances of the inductor, transducer, and battery supply and thus maximize the energy efficiency. A prototype chip was fabricated in TSMC 0.18-μm HV BCD technology and used to drive external 120pF capacitive micromachined US transducers (CMUTs) with a center frequency of approximately 2.5 MHz. Electrical measurements show that the prototype can generate pulses with a peak amplitude between 10 and 30 V accurate to within ±1 V. Acoustic measurements demonstrate successful ultrasonic pulse transmission and pulse-echo measurements. The prototype reaches a peak efficiency of 0.23 fCV2, which is the highest reported to date for HV pulsers targeting US imaging.

  2. A Resonant High-Voltage Pulser for Battery-Powered Ultrasound Devices
    I. Bellouki; N. Rozsa; Z.-Y. Chang; Z. Chen; M. Tan; M. Pertijs;
    In Dig. Techn. Papers IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC),
    February 2024. DOI: 10.1109/ISSCC49657.2024.10454286

  3. An ASIC for Efficient Generation of High-Voltage Transmit Pulses for Battery-Powered Ultrasound Devices
    Imad Bellouki; Nuriel Rozsa; Zu-Yao Chang; Zhao Chen; Mingliang Tan; Michiel Pertijs;
    In Annual Workshop on Circuits, Systems and Signal Processing (ProRISC),
    July 2024.

  4. An ASIC for Efficient Generation of High-Voltage Transmit Pulses for Battery-Powered Ultrasound Devices
    I. Bellouki; N. Rozsa; Z. Y. Chang; Z. Chen; M. Tan; M. A. P. Pertijs;
    In Proc. IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS),
    IEEE, September 2024. abstract.

  5. Electrical Pulser for a Load Having a Capacitance
    M.A.P. Pertijs; Z. Chen; M. Tan; I. Bellouki;
    Patent, Dutch 2035728, September 2023.

BibTeX support

Last updated: 23 Dec 2024

Imad Bellouki