A Highly Integrated Low-Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound Generation System for Biomedical Therapeutic Applications.

Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) is gaining popularity in various medical therapeutic applications thanks to its non-invasiveness and versatility. However, commercial LIPUS devices are still cumbersome and expensive. In this paper, a highly integrated LIPUS generation system based on a buck-boost converter is proposed. The integrated system is designed with AMS 350nm technology, consists a current-starving clock generator, a buck-boost converter, a converter driver, and a half-bridge transducer driver. The die area of the chip is 3.06 mm
²
. It anticipates a compact, lightweight device, which is highly desirable in biomedical applications for patient comfort and convenience. Post-layout simulations illustrate that the system is effectively configured to drive an ultrasound transducer, producing frequencies within a range of 266.7kHz to 2.78MHz. It also achieves a broad output voltage range from 1V up to 42V, while the input range is from 1.8V to 5V. An optimized Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) control system is proposed for the buck-boost converter to augment the stability of the system and facilitate a peak conversion efficiency of 73.3%.