Abstract

In ultrasound systems, the piezoelectric transducer (or PZT) elements used for imaging can number in the dozens to hundreds, depending on the type of the machine and number of supported channels. These piezo electric elements are driven with high-voltage (HV) (typically up to ±100V) pulses to produce enough ultrasonic energy for imaging. The elements are arranged in arrays, which allows directional tuning of ultrasonic signals (for example, beamforming). To achieve the high channel count demands of modern ultrasound systems, while balancing size and power constraints, the front-end transmit-and-receive architecture of the machine plays a key role. This application brief discusses and compares two architectures for creating an example 64-channel ultrasound system using TI’s latest 32-channel analog high voltage multiplexer TMUX9832 and 16-channel transmitter device TX7516. This document also showcases the implementation of a 128-channel system with two transmitter and four multiplexer devices, demonstrating that the same architectures can extend to higher channel count systems.