Analog Devices is aiming to win designs in both high end and low power portable systems with its latest 8-channel ultrasound receivers.
The company’s moved to a silicon germanium (SiGe) process technology to achieve the necessary combination of performance and low power in its latest generation of ultrasound receivers.
“Ultrasound equipment designers must continually balance new and changing demands for higher image quality and increased power efficiency,” said Patrick O’Doherty, vice president for the Healthcare Group at Analog Devices.
The AD9728 and AD9729 receiver chips each integrate low noise data converters with variable gain amplifiers and I/Q demodulators for implementation of CW (continuous wave) Doppler processing.
The company introduced its first integrated receiver three years ago, but these devices are the first to use SiGe process technology which provides an output-referred large-signal SNR of up to 67dB for use in high sensitivity systems.
The receivers feature a variable gain range of 45dB, a fully differential signal path, an active input preamplifier termination, a maximum gain of up to 52dB, and an ADC (analogue-to-digital converter) with a conversion rate of up to 80Msample/s.
In CW mode, the AD9278 is tuned for low power portable applications and has a power consumption of 25mW per channel.
In data conversion mode, the AD9278 consumes only 88 mW per channel at 40Msample/s.
For high-end systems, the AD9279 offers a highly configurable LNA featuring low input-referred noise density of 0.67nV/?Hz. Its power consumption is 139mW per channel at 40Msample/s.
Medical imaging applications, including ultrasound systems, represent one of Analog Devices’ most important medical systems market areas.
For more detail: Intros first SiGe ultrasound chip Analog Devices
