Staircase-wave drive circuit to drive therapeutic array transducer

An important component of all ultrasound system is a high voltage driver to excite the transducer for transmission. A new type of MOSFET switching driver circuit is proposed based on staircase wave drive concept for such applications. The staircase-wave drive can significantly decrease the harmonics in comparison with the conventional square-wave drive. Using a diode in series to the drain of each MOSFET, a staircase-wave driver was created with a relatively simple configuration. Since it does not require a resonant circuit to reduce the harmonics, the drive frequency can be freely changed and the total size of the drive circuit can be compact. Experiments with a prototype driver as well as circuit simulation show the efficacy of the proposed driver circuit.