| Title |
Delay-Structured Pulser Quantization for Low-Complexity 2-D Ultrasound Arrays |
| Authors |
한동훈(Donghun Han) ; 오우진(Woojin Oh) ; 윤희철(Heechul Yoon) |
| DOI |
https://doi.org/10.5370/KIEE.2026.75.7.1591 |
| Keywords |
Hardware complexity; Pulser Quantization; Beamforming |
| Abstract |
Acoustic focusing is one of the fundamental components of ultrasound systems for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Accordingly, each pulser is dedicated to controlling the active elements of the ultrasound transducer with different time delays to achieve precise focal positioning. However, mapping each element to a dedicated pulser linearly increases hardware complexity, which poses significant challenges in the recent adoption of large-scale element arrays such as two-dimensional arrays. In this paper, we propose a pulser quantization method that exploits the symmetricity of focusing delays in two-dimensional array?based systems while accounting for the finite sampling period of the pulser clock. The impact of pulser quantization on focusing performance is systematically analyzed, and an effective approach to reduce the number of required pulsers while preserving focusing capability is presented. By incorporating allowable focusing error for localized therapeutic applications, the proposed method achieves pulser count reductions of approximately 50%, and up to 87% when therapeutic focusing tolerance is considered, suggesting applicability to two-dimensional array?based 3D ultrasound systems and portable ultrasound devices. |