Integrated differential three-level high-voltage pulser output stage for CMUTs

A new integrated differential three-level high-voltage pulser output stage to drive capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) is proposed in this paper. A topology comparison between the new differential output stage and the most commonly used single-ended topology is performed in order to assess the performance of the new output stage. The new topology achieves a 10.9% lower power consumption and an area reduction of 23.5% for the same specifications. The differential output stage proposed is able to generate pulses with a slew rate of 2V/ns, a frequency of 5MHz and voltage levels of 60, 80, 100 V using 0.039 mm
²
of chip area. The power consumption is 0.951mW for a 30pF CMUT load. The design presented is implemented in a 0.35μm high-voltage process.