Architecture of the reconfigurable ultrasonic system‐on‐chip hardware platform

Abstract

Design of ultrasonic signal processing systems requires a paradigm shift to fully utilise the benefits of recent advancements in the field of integrated circuits. It is necessary to design a standardised common platform that provides the flexibility to develop both software and hardware solutions. This enables the user to explore the full design space including software only, hardware only, and hardware/software co-design. To fulfil this purpose, the authors introduce the reconfigurable ultrasonic system-on-chip hardware (RUSH) platform. RUSH provides a common basis which significantly reduces the effort required to develop an ultrasonic signal processing system able to process the full range of ultrasound from 20 kHz to 20 MHz. Furthermore, this study aims to make the design and implementation of signal processing algorithms in embedded software and reconfigurable hardware very efficient. To demonstrate the computational efficiency and design flexibility of the RUSH platform, several important computationally intense algorithms such as split spectrum processing, chirplet signal decomposition and coherent averaging have been successfully ported to the RUSH platform, emphasising the many parts of the RUSH architecture.