Co-Design of a Highly Integrated, High Peformance, 16-Channel Pulsers and Tx/Rx Switches for Ultrasound Imaging Systems

The drive for highly integrated ultrasonic scanners electronics stems from the ever-increasing demand for portable, high-quality miniaturize ultrasound imaging systems. Integration drives design complexities due to increase electromagnetic interactions of circuit and package. As such, signal and power integrity issues are exacerbated with impact to system performance, if not considered and addressed early in the design phase. In this paper we present the package electrical co-design and measurement validation results of a highly integrated, high- performance transmitter solution for ultrasound imaging system. We detail how electrical co-optimization of the silicon-package interaction, was achieved through a coupled circuit-to-electromagnetic modeling and simulation methodology. Laboratory measurements on a 16-channel ultrasound pulser circuits (PULS) are presented that validate the integrity of the co-design modeling and simulation methodology.