New Family of Analog-front-end ICs Boston MA

New family of analog-front-end ICs has power consumption of only 122 mW, making the devices suitable for portable-system applications. With noise performance of 0.85 nV/Hz at 2 MHz, the ICs are also applicable to high-channel-count, midrange-medical-ultrasound, sonar, and other applications.

The devices integrate eight channels of a low-noise amplifier; a voltage-controlled attenuator; a programmable-gain amplifier; a lowpass filter, and a 12-bit, 50M-sample/sec ADC with LVDS (low-voltage-differential-signaling)-data outputs.

The resolution of a medical-ultrasound system depends on the number of channels it uses to acquire the information as well the noise level of those channels. A channel with lower noise allows better screen resolution. To save cost and power, portable ultrasound systems use 32 to 64 channels. High-end systems have 256 to 1024 channels. However, because of this device?s low power consumption, you can use it in systems with high channel counts, such as the portable systems in ambulances. With these devices, emergency-medical technicians see high-resolution ultrasound images, which they can wirelessly beam to a hospital emergency room. Capturing a high-quality image in the ambulance saves valuable time if it obviates the need for performing a rescan of a patient on the hospital?s high-end ultrasound machine.