Development of a Point-of-Care Ultrasound Driver for Applications with Low Power and Reduced Area Requirements

A fully integrated high-voltage pulser driver was developed in TSMC 180 nm BCD for biomedical ultrasound applications. The driver operated at a 20 V regulated supply and was tested with 1.5 MHz and 3.0 MHz therapeutic arrays and a 550 pF capacitive load. The pulser was found to have the longest rise time of 2.1 ns at the maximum capacitive load, and the input-output delay was observed to be 14 ns. The total power consumption of the auxiliary circuit was measured to be $484 \mu\mathrm{W}$ at 100 kHz single pulse repetition rate, whilst the instantaneous current to the load reached 13 A.