CMOS Ultrasonic Receiver With On-Chip Analog-to-Digital Front End for High-Resolution Ultrasound Imaging Systems

Cheng, Teng-Chuan; Tsai, Tsung-Heng

doi:10.1109/jsen.2016.2599580

Cited by 22 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…To obtain high detection sensitivity of the CMUT front-end receiver circuit system, a high SNR is indispensable. The input reference current noise of the CMUT and the receiver amplifier circuit are mostly generated by the thermal noise of the feedback resistor R f , the thermal and flicker noise of the amplifier and thermal noise of the CMUT [15,17,30]. The input reference current noise trueinoise2¯ has been given as:trueinoise2¯=trueVop2¯false(Rf//RCMUTfalse)2+trueiop2¯+trueiRf2¯+trueiCMUT2¯=trueVop2¯false(Rf//RCMUTfalse)2+ω2Cp2trueVop2¯+4kTRf+4kTRCM...…”

Section: Full-differential Operational Amplifier Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Full-Differential Folded-Cascode Front-End Receiver Amplifier Integrated Circuit for Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers

Du¹,

He²,

Hao³

et al. 2019

Micromachines

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This paper describes the design of a front-end receiver amplifier for capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT). The proposed operational amplifier (op amp) consists of a full differential folded-cascode amplifier stage followed by a class AB output stage. A feedback resistor is applied between the input and the output of the op amp to make a transimpedance amplifier. We analyzed the equivalent circuit model of the CMUT element operating in the receiving mode and obtained the static output impedance and center frequency characteristics of the CMUT. The op amp gain, bandwidth, noise, and power consumption trade-oﬀs are discussed in detail. The amplifier was fabricated using GlobalFoundries 0.18-μm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The open loop gain of the amplifier is approximately 65 dB, and its gain bandwidth product is approximately 29.5 MHz. The measured input reference noise current was 56 nA/√Hz@3 MHz. The amplifier chip area is 325 μm × 150 μm and the op amp is powered by 3.3 V, the static power consumption is 11 mW. We verified the correct operation of our amplifier with CMUT and echo-pulse shown that the CMUT center frequency is 3 MHz with 92% fractional bandwidth.

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Section: Full-differential Operational Amplifier Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Full-Differential Folded-Cascode Front-End Receiver Amplifier Integrated Circuit for Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers

Du¹,

He²,

Hao³

et al. 2019

Micromachines

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“…Processing of a reflected ultrasound signals from the internal tissues generally requires a signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) of above 100‐dB of the receiver chain, which can be achieved by LNA, PGA, and ADC . However, amplitudes of the echo signals reflected from different depths of penetration, such as deep layer and surface of tissues, are very different.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, some research achievements had been reported in the previous published works, which mainly focused on the AFE system‐level design, LNA, filter, PGA, and ADC . Very few research, however, was focused on the VCAT, which was significant important for the smaller depths sensing or imaging scenarios.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, some research achievements had been reported in the previous published works, which mainly focused on the AFE system-level design, 1,8,9 LNA, 2,6,10 filter, 11,12 PGA, 13,14 and ADC. 4,[15][16][17] Very few research, however, was focused on the VCAT, which was significant important for the smaller depths sensing or imaging scenarios. This work proposed a novel design of the VCAT, which achieved a dynamic range (DR) of about 36 dB with continuous tunability and high-linearity-in-dB characteristics.…”

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confidence: 99%

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A large dynamic range voltage controlled attenuator with improved linearity‐in‐dB for ultrasound applications

Fei

et al. 2019

Circuit Theory & Apps

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Summary A large dynamic range (DR) and high linearity‐in‐dB voltage controlled attenuator (VCAT) for ultrasound applications was presented. Continuous tunable VCAT implemented with Metal‐Oxide‐Semiconductor (MOS) transistors used as shunt devices was proposed in this work, and the linearity‐in‐dB performance was analyzed in detail. Nonlinearity of the shunt transistors operated in different regions resulted in poor linearity‐in‐dB attenuation of the VCAT, which was undesirable in an ultrasonic receiver system. An effective linearity‐in‐dB improvement scheme was then proposed. The full scale range of the input control voltage was divided into N intervals with a same equal‐length by uniformly distributed voltage values. At these division voltages, the attenuation gains were corrected to be the ideal ones by the tracing and comparing circuits. In this way, the non‐linearity‐in‐dB was limited to the intervals between the two adjacent corrected attenuation gains, and the overall linearity of the VCAT was improved greatly. Measurement results showed that the dynamic range of the proposed attenuator was 36‐dB, and the gain errors were in a range from −1.22 to −0.55 dB. The noise figures (NF) at the commonly used ultrasonic frequencies was below 6‐dB, and the S11 was better than −10 dB over the input range of the control voltage.

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“…The upper surface of the silicon base is metallised to form the lower electrode. Many Letters have been published to enhance the sensitivity of CMUTs [5, 6]. To facilitate the design and analysis of electrostatic actuators, explicit formulae for computing the capacitance as a function of the geometrical parameters are required.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of fringing capacitance effect on the performance of micro‐electromechanical‐system‐based micromachined ultrasonic air transducer

Maity

Guha

et al. 2018

Micro & Nano Letters

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The work analyses the significance of fringing capacitance in modelling effectively the amplitude of the ultrasonic waves generated by silicon nitride membrane-based micromachined ultrasonic transducer (MUT). The amplitude of the ultrasonic waves is proportional to the displacement of the biased membrane under the influence of a sinusoidal signal. Fringing capacitance is significant as for operating the transducer in the medical imaging regime of frequency range 1-10 MHz, the dimension of the electrodes of the MUT capacitor becomes comparable with the separation between them. The device is modelled first without the fringing effect and then Palmer, Landau's and Younes Ataiiyan's approaches are considered for evaluating the fringing capacitance. The device is finite element method analysed by PZFLEX 3D simulator. The membrane displacement is evaluated with variation in device structural parameters of membrane radius and thickness, electrode separation and bias voltage for an extensive range of values. Fractional percentage error of the above analytical approaches is evaluated with respect to the PZFLEX which are regarded as closest to reality. Substantial decrease in the error is observed on modelling the device with the effect of the fringing capacitance.

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CMOS Ultrasonic Receiver With On-Chip Analog-to-Digital Front End for High-Resolution Ultrasound Imaging Systems

Cited by 22 publications

References 35 publications

Full-Differential Folded-Cascode Front-End Receiver Amplifier Integrated Circuit for Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers

Full-Differential Folded-Cascode Front-End Receiver Amplifier Integrated Circuit for Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers

A large dynamic range voltage controlled attenuator with improved linearity‐in‐dB for ultrasound applications

Analysis of fringing capacitance effect on the performance of micro‐electromechanical‐system‐based micromachined ultrasonic air transducer

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