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access icon openaccess A 12b-control ultra-low-power low-noise SC-VGA for medical ultrasound probes

This is an open access article published by the IET under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)
Received 22/08/2013, Accepted 29/09/2013, Published 30/09/2013

This Letter presents a 12b-control ultra-low-power low-noise two-stage single-ended to differential switched-capacitor variable gain amplifier (SC-VGA) for 2–6-MHz second harmonic cardiac imaging ultrasound probes in 0.18 μm complementary metal oxide semiconductor. The proposed SC-VGA consists of inverters and capacitor (CAP) arrays. By adopting inverters instead of operational trans-conductance amplifiers (OTAs) in traditional SC-amplifiers, both the power and noise are significantly improved. Each stage has a 6b binary-weighted CAP array, and in total the 12b CAP arrays achieve the dB-in-linear gain range from − 21 to 21 dB. The CAP array is divided between the upper 3b and lower 3b by a CAP to decrease the capacitance spread. The total power consumption is 150 μA at 1 V supply voltage, and the input referred noise is 6.5 nV/√HZ at 4 MHz. The second harmonic distortion (HD2) has the mean value − 77 dB at the 460 mV peak-to-peak output swing for 50 samples of Monte Carlo mismatch simulation with a 30 MHz sampling frequency.

Inspec keywords: Monte Carlo methods; CMOS analogue integrated circuits; switched capacitor networks; capacitance; biomedical ultrasonics; differential amplifiers; low-power electronics; invertors; low noise amplifiers; capacitors

Other keywords: Monte Carlo mismatch simulation; ultralow-power low-noise two-stage single-ended-to-differential switched-capacitor variable gain amplifier; ultralow-power low-noise SC-VGA; SC-amplifiers; complementary metal oxide semiconductor; second harmonic distortion; harmonic cardiac imaging ultrasound probes; medical ultrasound probes; frequency 2 MHz to 6 MHz; capacitor arrays; binary-weighted CAP array; sampling frequency; inverters; voltage 1 V; power consumption; gain -21 dB to 21 dB; HD2

Subjects: Sonic and ultrasonic radiation (biomedical imaging/measurement); Probability theory, stochastic processes, and statistics; Amplifiers; Patient diagnostic methods and instrumentation; Monte Carlo methods; Sonic and ultrasonic applications; Sonic and ultrasonic radiation (medical uses); Time varying and switched networks; Capacitors; Power electronics, supply and supervisory circuits; CMOS integrated circuits

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