Integrated Circuits and Systems >

2024 , Vol. 1 >Issue 1: 33 - 42

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23919/ICS.2024.3422708

Special Section on Selected Papers from ASICON2023

An AC Coupling Ultrasound Analog Front-End Architecture With a Three-Stage DCOC

  • XIANGCHEN WAN ,
  • SIQING WU ,
  • XINWEI YU ,
  • XINGTAO ZHU ,
  • AND FAN YE
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  • The State Key Lab of Integrated Chips and Systems, Fudan University, Shanghai 200437, China

XIANGCHEN WAN received the B.S. degree in microelectronics science and engineering in 2022 from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, where he is currently working toward the M.S. degree. His research interests include analog circuits for medical ultrasound imaging system and analog to digital converters.

SIQING WU received the B.S. degree in micro- electronics science and engineering from Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China, in 2021. She is cur- rently working toward the M.S. degree with the State Key Lab of Integrated Chips and Systems, Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Her research focuses on ultrasound analog front-end circuits for medical imaging.

XINWEI YU (Graduate Student Member, IEEE) received the B.S. degree from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 2016, and the M.S. degree from Xidian University, Xi’an, China, in 2020. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree with Fudan University, Shanghai, China. His research focuses on analog circuits for medical ultrasound systems.

XINGTAO ZHU received the B.S. degree in mi- croelectronics in 2022 from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, where he is currently working toward the M.S. degree. His research focuses on high-performance signal chain circuits.

FAN YE (Member, IEEE) received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in microelectronics from Fu- dan University, Shanghai, China, in 2000, 2003, and 2010, respectively. Since 2011, he has been an Associate Research Fellow with the State-Key Laboratory of ASIC and System and the Micro- electronics School, Fudan University. His research interests include analog/mixed-signal integrated circuit design, such as high performance and high efficiency analog-to-digital converters.

Received date: 2024-02-29

  Revised date: 2024-06-02

  Accepted date: 2024-06-25

  Online published: 2024-11-27

Supported by

National Key Research and Development Project under Grant(2020YFC0122101)

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Abstract

This paper presents an AC coupling ultrasound analog front-end (AFE) architecture with a three-stage DC offset correction (DCOC) circuit. In ultrasound systems, the low noise amplifier (LNA), time gain control (TGC), and low pass filter (LPF) constitute the AFE, which achieves low noise, time-varying gain compensation, and filtering for the received ultrasound signal. The inherent asymmetry in LNA, layout asymmetry and the process variation introduce DC offset and the TGC changes it into low-frequency offset drift. The proposed DCOC circuit for LNA is composed of a transconductance amplifier and an off-chip capacitor, while a fully differential operational amplifier and a pseudo resistor are used for other amplification stages. The AC coupling scheme is also used to reduce the offset and drift. The simulation result shows when the DCOC and the AC coupling are adopted, the offset and drift are almost perfectly suppressed. The proposed AFE has been fabricated by a 28-nm CMOS process, and it achieves an 85 dB gain range with low input-referred noise of 2.43 nV/ $\sqrt{Hz}$ at 5 MHz, and it also has a tunable bandwidth of 15/30 MHz and switchable input impedance of 50/100 ohms.

Key words： DC offset correction; low-frequency drift; time gain compensation; ultrasound analog front- end

Cite this article

XIANGCHEN WAN , SIQING WU , XINWEI YU , XINGTAO ZHU , AND FAN YE . An AC Coupling Ultrasound Analog Front-End Architecture With a Three-Stage DCOC[J]. Integrated Circuits and Systems, 2024 , 1(1) : 33 -42 . DOI: 10.23919/ICS.2024.3422708

References

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