As the world population continues to soar and the aging problem is becoming increasingly serious, the demand for medical diagnosis and nursing equipment around the world continues to rise, especially the rapid growth of demand for high-end medical electronic products such as computer tomography scanners, magnetic resonance machines, and high-end ultrasonic diagnostic instruments, which strongly drives the expansion of the global medical electronic market. However, most of the current medical equipment are bulky, expensive and energy-intensive, which can not meet the needs of medical staff well. Therefore, the demand for medical diagnostic equipment with small size, high energy efficiency and high cost efficiency in the medical electronic market is particularly urgent.

Portable ultrasonic system is a standing medical equipment for hospitals, clinics, ambulances and rescue stations in remote areas. As a market where portable medical devices are widely used, portable ultrasonic systems are also faced with the design challenges of miniaturization and low power consumption. Users expect to maintain acceptable image quality while meeting the requirements of portable size and running time. This requires designers to reduce energy consumption as much as possible, but at the same time, they must ensure that the battery can provide sufficient power supply throughout the operation of the equipment to ensure the image resolution and ensure that the equipment can also play an excellent role in the field operation.

"The high energy efficiency simulation technology of National Semiconductor of the United States makes the above expectations possible," said Mr. Wu Weiqiang, the Asia-Pacific market director of National Semiconductor of the United States, "The innovative PowerWise design can ensure that the battery can support the long-term operation of the device; at the same time, the continuous-time sigma-delta analog/digital converter technology and digital variable gain amplification technology can improve the image resolution. In addition, the advanced chip packaging technology of National Semiconductor of the United States makes the chip have lower noise and smaller size." The portable ultrasonic system adopting the National Semiconductor Simulation Subsystem of the United States can achieve high-resolution images, give full play to the performance of large instruments, ensure accurate diagnosis by doctors, and help to reduce the size of the scheme, power consumption and system cost. It has a competitive advantage.

Perfect ultrasonic system solution

National Semiconductor launched the industry's first 8-channel ultrasonic transmitter/receiver chipset designed specifically for portable ultrasonic systems. The innovative circuit architecture of this PowerWise chipset can help engineers design portable ultrasonic systems with longer battery life and image resolution comparable to large ultrasonic scanners.

The 8-channel transmit/receive chipset is composed of four chips. The collaborative work between chips enables the chipset to achieve unparalleled ultra-high performance and efficiency. It contains all necessary circuits for ultrasonic system, including analog front-end circuit (AFE) of receiving system, switch of transmitting/receiving system, pulse generator of transmitting system and beamformer of configurable transmitting system. Its highly integrated features enable system designers to use the chipset to develop a 128-channel portable ultrasonic system that is small and lightweight, with clearer images and easier to make accurate diagnosis based on it.

The analog front-end circuit of the chipset adopts a very unique architecture, which can not only ensure excellent image quality, but also minimize the power consumption of mode B, even 10% lower than the nearest competitor. This analog front-end circuit also has the industry's highest resolution digital variable gain amplifier (DVGA) and low-power continuous-time sigma-delta (CTSD) analog/digital converter (ADC). In addition, the digital variable gain amplifier also has many advantages that the traditional analog variable gain amplifier does not have. For example, better calibration between channels and better signal spectrum performance can be achieved. The continuous-time Sigma-deltaADC itself also has the brick-wall mixing signal filtering function. National Semiconductor of the United States provides a fully functional demonstration system and evaluation kit for the analog front-end circuit, helping system developers shorten the development cycle and save development costs.