New types of medical electronic equipment will continue to emerge

The global population growth and the accelerated aging of the population, the rising cost of health care, and the rapid development of the economy and the gradual enhancement of health awareness also continue to increase the demand for new types of medical electronic devices. As a result, healthcare products have become another revolutionary technology application area that semiconductor manufacturers have followed after PC products and communication devices.

According to statistics, the compound annual growth rate of the global medical equipment is 11%, of which the compound annual growth rate of the portable or handheld ultrasound system market is 19.2%, reaching 3.3 billion US dollars by 2010. It can be seen that ultrasound/medical imaging is the highlight of the development of medical electronics. Of course, major semiconductor manufacturers are even more eye-catching and are eager to seize the market to avoid missed opportunities.

Medical ultrasound systems are becoming highly integrated, high-performance, low-power, multi-functional, and portable. The design has become increasingly complex, and higher requirements have been placed on the receiving circuits of analog front-ends. How to optimize the relevant parameters from the system level according to the requirements of the system on the analog front end, integrate LNA, VCA, PGA, reduce external signal interference, improve system performance, and thus well meet the system requirements? TI's fully-integrated analog front-end AFE58xx family solves these problems, helping manufacturers save system costs and facilitate the formation of new technologies that improve the quality of innovative ultrasound systems.

The AFE5805 integrates eight channels, including a low noise amplifier (LNA), voltage controlled attenuator, programmable gain amplifier, low-pass filter, and a 12-bit 50-MSPS ADC that supports LVDS data output. The greatest benefit of this type of analog front-end integration is that it can avoid interference from outside signals. The AFE5805 is available in a 15mm x 9mm package and is about half the size of existing solutions. In addition, by reducing the number of components, the AFE5805 reduces power consumption by more than 20% with a power efficiency of 122 mW per channel, and at the same time, its noise is 40% lower than the nearest competitor. The AFE5805's noise at 2 MHz is only 0.85nV/rtHz. Its performance not only meets the needs of portable devices, but also meets the requirements of high-channel density, medium-range ultrasound systems.

Driven by the vast demand, new types of medical electronic equipment will continue to emerge. The trend toward miniaturization and mobility of portable/consumer medical devices in the future will drive semiconductor devices to develop higher accuracy, higher performance or lower power consumption and higher integration depending on the application. TI also expressed its optimism for the medical electronics market. It will also spare no efforts to develop related technologies and promote its development so as to meet consumer demand for medical devices.