Low-Power Low-Noise Amplifier Using Attenuation-Adaptive Noise Control for Ultrasound Imaging Systems

This paper presents a low-noise amplifier (LNA) using attenuation-adaptive noise control (AANC) for ultrasound imaging systems. The proposed AANC reduces unnecessary power consumption of the LNA, which arises from useless noise floor, by controlling the noise floor of the LNA with respect to the attenuation of the ultrasound. In addition, a current feedback amplifier with a source-degenerated input stage reduces variations of the bandwidth and the closed loop gain, which are caused by the AANC. The proposed LNA was fabricated using a 0.18-mu m CMOS process. The input-referred voltage noise density of the fabricated LNA is 1.01 nV/v Hz at the frequency of 5 MHz. The second harmonic distortion is -53.5 dB when the input signal frequency is 5 MHz and the output voltage swing is 2 V-pp. The power consumption of the LNA using the AANC is 16.2 mW at the supply voltage of 1.8 V, which is reduced to 64% of that without using the AANC. The noise efficiency factor (NEF) of the proposed LNA is 3.69, to our knowledge, which is the lowest NEF compared with previous LNAs for ultrasound imaging.