Protection circuits for very high frequency ultrasound systems

The purpose of protection circuits in ultrasound applications is to block noise signals from the transmitter from reaching the transducer and also to prevent unwanted high voltage signals from reaching the receiver. The protection circuit using a resistor and diode pair is widely used due to its simple architecture, however, it may not be suitable for very high frequency (VHF) ultrasound transducer applications (>100 MHz) because of its limited bandwidth. Therefore, a protection circuit using MOSFET devices with unique structure is proposed in this paper. The performance of the designed protection circuit was compared with that of other traditional protection schemes. The performance characteristics measured were the insertion loss (IL), total harmonic distortion (THD) and transient response time (TRT). The new protection scheme offers the lowest IL (-1.0 dB), THD (-69.8 dB) and TRT (78 ns) at 120 MHz. The pulse-echo response using a 120 MHz LiNbO3 transducer with each protection circuit was measured to validate the feasibility of the protection circuits in VHF ultrasound applications. The sensitivity and bandwidth of the transducer using the new protection circuit improved by 252.1 and 50.9 %, respectively with respect to the protection circuit using a resistor and diode pair. These results demonstrated that the new protection circuit design minimizes the IL, THD and TRT for VHF ultrasound transducer applications.