Department of Medical IT Convergence Engineering, Kumoh National Institute of Technology, 350-27 Gumi-daero, Gumi 39253, Korea.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Mar 28;21(7):2356. doi: 10.3390/s21072356.
Ultrasound transducer devices have their own frequency ranges, depending on the applications and specifications, due to penetration depth, sensitivity, and image resolution. For imaging applications, in particular, the transducer devices are preferable to have a wide bandwidth due to the specific information generated by the tissue or blood vessel structures. To support these ultrasound transducer devices, ultrasound power amplifier hardware with a wide bandwidth can improve the transducer performance. Therefore, we developed a new bandwidth expander circuit using specially designed switching architectures to increase the power amplifier bandwidth. The measured bandwidth of the power amplifier with the help of the bandwidth expander circuit increased by 56.9%. In addition, the measured echo bandwidths of the 15-, 20-, and 25-MHz transducer devices were increased by 8.1%, 6.0%, and 9.8%, respectively, with the help of the designed bandwidth expander circuit. Therefore, the designed architecture could help an ultrasound system hardware with a wider bandwidth, thus supporting the use of different frequency ultrasound transducer devices with a single developed ultrasound system.
超声换能器设备有其自己的频率范围，这取决于应用和规格，因为穿透深度、灵敏度和图像分辨率不同。对于成像应用，特别是由于组织或血管结构产生的特定信息，换能器设备最好具有宽带宽。为了支持这些超声换能器设备，具有宽带宽的超声功率放大器硬件可以提高换能器的性能。因此，我们使用专门设计的开关架构开发了一种新的带宽扩展器电路，以提高功率放大器的带宽。在带宽扩展器电路的帮助下，测量得到的功率放大器带宽增加了 56.9%。此外，在设计的带宽扩展器电路的帮助下，15MHz、20MHz 和 25MHz 换能器设备的测量回波带宽分别增加了 8.1%、6.0%和 9.8%。因此，所设计的架构可以帮助超声系统硬件具有更宽的带宽，从而支持使用单个开发的超声系统的不同频率的超声换能器设备。
