[2023] A compact ultrasound low-noise amplifier with built-in time-gain compensation

• In an ultrasound imaging system, low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) play an important role: they amplify the received echo signals, allowing them to be processed while maintaining signal-to-noise ratio. The LNA often dominates the power consumption of an ultrasound receiver, and hence power-efficient circuit design is critical for power-constrained applications, such as battery-powered ultrasound probes.
• A challenge associated with the design of ultrasound LNAs is that the incoming echo signal often has a very high dynamic range (DR). Luckily, the DR can be compressed by applying time-gain compensation (TGC): increasing the gain of the LNA exponentially with time. We have explored LNAs with TGC in previous work, e.g. [1], leading to very power-efficient designs, but still occupying relatively large die area. In this project, you will look for ways of not only achieving low power consumption, but also small die size.
• The project includes the design, tape-out and measurement of a prototype chip.

[1] P. Guo, Z.-Y. Chang, E. Noothout, H. J. Vos, J. G. Bosch, N. de Jong, M. D. Verweij, and M. A. P. Pertijs, “A pitch-matched low-noise analog front-end with accurate continuous time-gain compensation for high-density ultrasound transducer arrays,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, pp. 1–13, 2022, early access

Contact

Last modified: 2023-02-12