Electronic Instrumentation Laboratory
Department of Microelectronics

Imad Bellouki

Publications

  1. An Amplitude-Programmable Energy-Recycling High-Voltage Resonant Pulser for Battery-Powered Ultrasound Devices
    Bellouki, Imad; Rozsa, Nuriel N. M.; Chang, Zu-Yao; Chen, Zhao; Tan, Mingliang; Pertijs, Michiel A. P.;
    IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits,
    pp. 1--12, 2024. Early Access. DOI: 10.1109/JSSC.2024.3494536
    Abstract: ... This article presents an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for battery-powered ultrasound (US) devices. The ASIC implements a novel energy-efficient high-voltage (HV) pulser that generates HV transmit (TX) pulses directly from a low-voltage (LV) battery supply. By means of a single off-chip inductor, energy is supplied to a US transducer in a resonant fashion, directly generating half-period sinusoidal HV pulses on the transducer, while consuming substantially less energy than a conventional class-D pulser. By recycling residual reactive energy from the transducer back to the input, the energy consumption is further reduced by more than 50%. The autocalibration techniques are leveraged to deal with tolerances of the inductor, transducer, and battery supply and thus maximize the energy efficiency. A prototype chip was fabricated in TSMC 0.18-μm HV BCD technology and used to drive external 120pF capacitive micromachined US transducers (CMUTs) with a center frequency of approximately 2.5 MHz. Electrical measurements show that the prototype can generate pulses with a peak amplitude between 10 and 30 V accurate to within ±1 V. Acoustic measurements demonstrate successful ultrasonic pulse transmission and pulse-echo measurements. The prototype reaches a peak efficiency of 0.23 fCV2, which is the highest reported to date for HV pulsers targeting US imaging.

  2. A Resonant High-Voltage Pulser for Battery-Powered Ultrasound Devices
    I. Bellouki; N. Rozsa; Z.-Y. Chang; Z. Chen; M. Tan; M. Pertijs;
    In Dig. Techn. Papers IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC),
    February 2024. DOI: 10.1109/ISSCC49657.2024.10454286

  3. An ASIC for Efficient Generation of High-Voltage Transmit Pulses for Battery-Powered Ultrasound Devices
    Imad Bellouki; Nuriel Rozsa; Zu-Yao Chang; Zhao Chen; Mingliang Tan; Michiel Pertijs;
    In Annual Workshop on Circuits, Systems and Signal Processing (ProRISC),
    July 2024.

  4. An ASIC for Efficient Generation of High-Voltage Transmit Pulses for Battery-Powered Ultrasound Devices
    I. Bellouki; N. Rozsa; Z. Y. Chang; Z. Chen; M. Tan; M. A. P. Pertijs;
    In Proc. IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS),
    IEEE, September 2024. abstract.

  5. Electrical Pulser for a Load Having a Capacitance
    M.A.P. Pertijs; Z. Chen; M. Tan; I. Bellouki;
    Patent, Dutch 2035728, September 2023.

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