Pop Flavius, Herrera Bernard, Cassella Cristian, Rinaldi Matteo
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Sensors (Basel). 2020 Dec 29;21(1):157. doi: 10.3390/s21010157.
The present work details a novel approach to increase the transmitting sensitivity of piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducer arrays and performing the direct modulation of digital information on the same device. The direct modulation system can reach 3× higher signal-to-noise ratio level and 3× higher communication range (from 6.2 cm boosted to 18.6 cm) when compared to more traditional continuous wave drive at the same energy consumption levels. When compared for the same transmission performance, the direct modulation consumes 80% less energy compared to the continues wave. The increased performance is achieved with a switching circuit that allows to generate a short high-AC voltage on the ultrasonic array, by using an LC tank and a bipolar junction transistor, starting with a low-DC voltage, making it CMOS-compatible. Since the modulation signal can directly be formed by the transmitted bits (on/off keying encoding) this also serve as the modulation for the data itself, hence direct modulation. The working principle of the circuit is described, optimization is performed relative to several circuital parameters and a high-performance experimental application is demonstrated.
本工作详细介绍了一种新颖的方法,用于提高压电微机械超声换能器阵列的发射灵敏度,并在同一器件上实现数字信息的直接调制。与在相同能耗水平下的更传统连续波驱动相比,直接调制系统可达到高3倍的信噪比水平和高3倍的通信范围(从6.2厘米提高到18.6厘米)。在相同传输性能的比较中,直接调制比连续波能耗低80%。通过一个开关电路实现了性能提升,该电路利用一个LC振荡电路和一个双极结型晶体管,从低直流电压开始,在超声阵列上产生一个短的高交流电压,使其与CMOS兼容。由于调制信号可直接由传输的比特形成(开关键控编码),这也用作数据本身的调制,因此称为直接调制。描述了该电路的工作原理,针对几个电路参数进行了优化,并展示了一个高性能的实验应用。