A Four-Channel, 36 V, 780 kHz Piezo Driver Chip for Structural Health Monitoring

This paper describes a four-channel piezo driver chip for use in active structural health monitoring. Each channel can drive a piezoelectric transducer with a continuous-wave signal of ±36 V and 780 kHz. The waveform is synthesized using filtered pulse-width modulation (PWM), where the pulse transition times are precomputed through a least-square optimization problem. A calibration technique is introduced to achieve subnanosecond timing accuracy and -40.5 dB signal distortion. A 13 mm2 proof-of-concept IC was fabricated in a 0.25 μm BCD process and evaluated within an application test bed.