TY - JOUR
T1 - A compact and energy-efficient ultrasound receiver using PTAT reference circuit
AU - Alazzawi, Yarub
AU - Chatterjee, Oindrila
AU - Chakrabartty, Shantanu
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by research grants from National Institute of Health under Grant R01-DE027098, and CNS:1405273.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019
PY - 2019/12
Y1 - 2019/12
N2 - Portable and embedded ultrasound applications require energy-efficient receivers that can operate over a wide range of incident ultrasonic energy. In this paper we show that by directly injecting the ultrasonic signal into a proportional-to-absolute-temperature (PTAT) reference circuit, the pre-amplification and rectification stages used in a conventional ultrasonic receiver can be eliminated which leads to a significant improvement in the system energy-efficiency. The PTAT circuit self-biases itself in accordance to the magnitude of the incident ultrasound pressure signal and is also configured to function as an active diode (with threshold voltage of ≈25 mV) to achieve signal rectification. In this paper we present measurement results obtained from a PTAT-based ultrasound receiver that has been prototyped in a 0.5 μm CMOS process, and we compare the performance to a standard transconductance amplifier (TCA) based design that has also been prototyped in the same process. The improvement in input dynamic range was measured to be 25 dB and sensitivity of the PTAT-based receiver was measured to be 21 Hz/mV when the biasing current is 16.67 nA. We also present the bit-error-rate (BER) performance when the receiver circuit is used for a substrate communications application where ultrasound is used for transmitting and receiving data through an Aircraft grade Aluminum plate.
AB - Portable and embedded ultrasound applications require energy-efficient receivers that can operate over a wide range of incident ultrasonic energy. In this paper we show that by directly injecting the ultrasonic signal into a proportional-to-absolute-temperature (PTAT) reference circuit, the pre-amplification and rectification stages used in a conventional ultrasonic receiver can be eliminated which leads to a significant improvement in the system energy-efficiency. The PTAT circuit self-biases itself in accordance to the magnitude of the incident ultrasound pressure signal and is also configured to function as an active diode (with threshold voltage of ≈25 mV) to achieve signal rectification. In this paper we present measurement results obtained from a PTAT-based ultrasound receiver that has been prototyped in a 0.5 μm CMOS process, and we compare the performance to a standard transconductance amplifier (TCA) based design that has also been prototyped in the same process. The improvement in input dynamic range was measured to be 25 dB and sensitivity of the PTAT-based receiver was measured to be 21 Hz/mV when the biasing current is 16.67 nA. We also present the bit-error-rate (BER) performance when the receiver circuit is used for a substrate communications application where ultrasound is used for transmitting and receiving data through an Aircraft grade Aluminum plate.
KW - Piezoelectric transducer
KW - PTAT reference circuit
KW - Reference circuits
KW - Ultrasound receiver circuit
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85075158835&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.mejo.2019.104656
DO - 10.1016/j.mejo.2019.104656
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85075158835
SN - 0026-2692
VL - 94
JO - Microelectronics Journal
JF - Microelectronics Journal
M1 - 104656
ER -