Patent ID: 7502278

Claim:
An analog CW (continuous wave) beamformer having a plurality M of channels, each for connection to a channel receiver input resulting from an ultrasonic excitation of frequency F, comprising: for each channel; a ring counter having N phases; circuitry for loading initial values into the ring counter; the ring counter having a ring counter clock input frequency of N times the ultrasonic excitation frequency F for successively and repetitively clocking the initial values through the ring counter; a MUX/decoder coupled to the ring counter to provide inphase and quadrature mixer drive signals with a phasing responsive to the initial values in the respective ring counter; an inphase and a quadrature mixer coupled to the inphase and quadrature mixer drive signals, each having an input for coupling to a respective channel receiver input and inphase and quadrature baseband outputs for coupling to another analog CW (continuous wave) mixer's baseband summing circuitry.