Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Design and Implementation of Analog-Digital Hybrid Beam-Formers for Low-Complexity Ultrasound Systems: A Feasibility Study

Version 1 : Received: 21 October 2023 / Approved: 23 October 2023 / Online: 23 October 2023 (13:28:25 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Yoon, H.; Kim, J.; Lee, K.; Song, T.-K. Design and Implementation of Analog-Digital Hybrid Beamformers for Low-Complexity Ultrasound Systems: A Feasibility Study. Bioengineering 2024, 11, 8. Yoon, H.; Kim, J.; Lee, K.; Song, T.-K. Design and Implementation of Analog-Digital Hybrid Beamformers for Low-Complexity Ultrasound Systems: A Feasibility Study. Bioengineering 2024, 11, 8.

Abstract

Low-complexity ultrasound systems are increasingly desired for wearable point-of-care ultra-sound and massive-channel ultrasound for 3-D matrix imaging. However, the system complexity is closely associated with the imaging capabilities, remaining as a challenge. To resolve this limitation, this study revisits the general structures of analog and digital beamformers and in-troduces a hybrid approach to implement efficient ultrasound systems. The suggested hybrid beamforming takes two stages, where the first analog stage partially beamforms M-channel RF signals to N sum-out data (M-to-N beamforming), and the second digital stage beamforms N partial sums to single final beamformed data (N-to-1 beamforming). Our approach was systematically designed and implemented, which was demonstrated with a customized 64-channel 1-D phased array using a tissue mimicking phantom. The demonstrated results indicate that the analog-digital hybrid beamforming can be applied to any kind of arrays for sophisticated 3-D imaging and tiny wearable ultrasound applications.

Keywords

analog beamforming; hybrid beamforming systems; point-of-care ultrasound; wearable ultrasound; massive-channel systems; ultrasound system design

Subject

Engineering, Bioengineering

Comments (0)

We encourage comments and feedback from a broad range of readers. See criteria for comments and our Diversity statement.

Leave a public comment
Send a private comment to the author(s)
* All users must log in before leaving a comment
Views 0
Downloads 0
Comments 0


×
Alerts
Notify me about updates to this article or when a peer-reviewed version is published.
We use cookies on our website to ensure you get the best experience.
Read more about our cookies here.