Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers (전자공학회논문지)

The Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers (대한전자공학회)
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A Reconfigurable Analog Front-end Integrated Circuit for Medical Ultrasound Imaging Systems

초음파 의료 영상 시스템을 위한 재구성 가능한 아날로그 집적회로

  • Cha, Hyouk-Kyu (Dept. of Electrical and Information Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology)
  • 차혁규 (서울과학기술대학교 전기정보공학과)
  • Received : 2014.10.28
  • Accepted : 2014.11.24
  • Published : 2014.12.25
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Abstract

This paper presents an analog front-end integrated circuit (IC) for medical ultrasound imaging systems using standard $0.18-{\mu}m$ CMOS process. The proposed front-end circuit includes the transmit part which consists of 15-V high-voltage pulser operating at 2.6 MHz, and the receive part which consists of switch and a low-power low-noise preamplifier. Depending on the operation mode, the output driver in the transmit pulser can be reconfigured as the switch in the receive path and thus the area of the overall front-end IC is reduced by over 70% in comparison to previous work. The designed single-channel front-end prototype consumes less than $0.045mm^2$ of core area and can be utilized as a key building block in highly-integrated multi-array ultrasound medical imaging systems.

본 논문에서는 초음파 의료 영상 시스템을 위한 아날로그 front-end 집적회로를 $0.18-{\mu}m$ 표준 CMOS 반도체 공정을 이용하여 설계하였다. 제안 된 front-end 회로는 2.6 MHz에서 15-V 고전압 펄스 신호를 생성하는 송신부와 고전압 차단 스위치 및 저전력 저잡음 증폭기에 해당하는 수신부를 모두 포함하고 있으며, 동작 모드에 따라서 송신부의 출력 드라이버를 수신단의 스위치 회로로 재구성이 가능하도록 설계를 하여 기존 front-end 회로와 비교하였을 때 한 채널 당 70% 이상의 칩 면적을 줄일 수 있다. 설계 된 단일 채널 front-end회로는 $0.045mm^2$ 이하의 작은 칩 면적을 차지함으로써 다중 어레이 방식의 초음파 의료 영상 시스템에 적용 시 작은 면적으로 구현이 가능하다.

Keywords

References

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