Design and Development of 32 channel Receiver Beam Former

Array Signal Processor is a complex ASIC which can perform Phased array beam forming of Ultrasound Sensor data up to 32 channels. The Array Signal Processor consists of Transmit Beam Former, Transducer, and Receive Former. The Array signal Processor works based on the principle of Pulse-echo Processing. When the voltage is applied to the transducer probe, pulses are produced due to piezoelectric effect (transmit-beam former). These pulses from the transducer probe hit the target in region of interest and as a result, echoes are produced. These signals are then processed by the receiver beam former. The main processing blocks in this receiver beam former are Integer delay unit, Fractional delay unit, Apodization unit and summer unit. The Integer delay unit, Fractional delay unit, Apodization unit and summer unit are implemented in Verilog and kept as Design under Test (DUT). The same processing blocks are implemented in MATLAB and the outputs are stored in a memory. The DUT output and Matlab output will be compared and automated test results will be generated.

[1]  A. Happonen,et al.  Several approaches to fixed-point implementation of matrix inversion , 2005, International Symposium on Signals, Circuits and Systems, 2005. ISSCS 2005..

[2]  P. Mandal,et al.  Real time dynamic receive apodization for an ultrasound imaging system , 2006, 19th International Conference on VLSI Design held jointly with 5th International Conference on Embedded Systems Design (VLSID'06).

[3]  F. Gran,et al.  Broadband minimum variance beamforming for ultrasound imaging , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control.

[4]  David Bernal Casas.  Digital Beamforming Implementation on an FPGA Platform , 2007 .

[5]  Yasser M. Kadah,et al.  Digital Signal Processing Methodologies for Conventional Digital Medical Ultrasound Imaging System , 2013 .

[6]  Byungsub Kim,et al.  24.8 An analog-digital-hybrid single-chip RX beamformer with non-uniform sampling for 2D-CMUT ultrasound imaging to achieve wide dynamic range of delay and small chip area , 2014, 2014 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers (ISSCC).

[7]  Jørgen Arendt Jensen,et al.  Computer Phantoms for Simulating Ultrasound B-Mode and CFM Images , 1997 .

[8]  Gang Li,et al.  A Hybrid Analog-Digital Adaptive Beamforming in Time-Modulated Linear Arrays , 2010 .

[9]  M. Viberg,et al.  Two decades of array signal processing research: the parametric approach , 1996, IEEE Signal Process. Mag..

[10]  A. Austeng,et al.  Adaptive Beamforming Applied to Medical Ultrasound Imaging , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control.

[11]  Jingwei Xu,et al.  An optimized ultrasound digital beamformer with dynamic focusing implemented on FPGA , 2014, 2014 36th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[12]  Jin S. Lee,et al.  Computationally Efficient Adaptive Beamformer for Ultrasound Imaging Based on QR Decomposition , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control.