Switching Power Suppliers Noise Reduction in Ultrasound Doppler Fluid Measurements

Ultrasound Doppler techniques are widely employed in detecting the velocity of moving fluids both in medical and industrial applications. Echo Doppler electronics systems include a highly sensitive front-end suitable to processing the very low power ultrasound echoes received by the transducer. Moreover, the front-end input bandwidth typically ranges between 100 kHz and 10 MHz, which is the same frequency range where modern switching regulators work. Thus, the front-end is particularly prone to the noise produced by the suppliers that power the board itself. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) filters and spread-spectrum modulation of the switching regulator frequency help, but the results are often not optimal, and unacceptable artifacts are visible in the Doppler spectrum. In this paper a spread-spectrum modulation is proposed that concentrates the switching noise in the low-frequency range of the Doppler spectrum (e.g., 0–100 Hz). This range is removed by the high-pass clutter filter normally used in velocity Doppler investigations, thus switching noise and artifacts are eliminated. The method is verified through mathematical simulations and tested in measurements carried out with a research Doppler system. An example is presented in which the artifacts present during the investigation of a 0.4-m/s flow in a 25.4-mm diameter pipe are effectively removed by the proposed method.