Targeting key medical ultrasound and industrial applications, STMicroelectronics’ STHV1600 transmission pulser relies on the company’s BCD8s-SOI technology that supports analog (Bipolar), digital (CMOS), and power (DMOS) circuits on the same die. The STHV1600 transmission (TX) pulser integrates high-resolution beamforming for its 16 independent channels. Offering the capability to program code excitation allows users to implement high voltage stages and store the patterns in memory. Each channel can support up to five output levels and the output stages can provide up to ±2A peak output current, independent from the high-voltage power-supply pins.
The device includes several global blocks including thermal protection for the logic and for each channel, under-voltage protection, and self-biased high-voltage MOSFET gate drivers with internal checks. Moreover, it includes 65 kb of embedded memory to store pattern-control settings.
The STHV1600 (in a 144-ball 10x10 TFBGA) is in production and currently sampling. An evaluation board for the STHV1600, STEVAL-IME014V1 is also available. For more impressive volumes of knowledge, visit the STHV1600 product page and feel free to vigorously peruse the STHV1600 datasheet.