Patent ID: 7859941

Claim:
A system for apodization control of a microbeamformer, comprising: a mainframe beamformer having a plurality of mainframe channels, each of said mainframe channels including a mainframe receiver and a mainframe transmitter for transmitting a pulsed power supply voltage; a plurality of microbeamformer patches, each of said microbeamformer patches including a plurality of microbeamformer channels, each of said microbeamformer channels including a transducer, a microbeamformer transmitter and control circuit for driving said transducer, a microbeamformer receiver for receiving signals from said transducer and a delay element for delaying the received transducer signals, said microbeamformer transmitters in each of said microbeamformer patches being connected to a common node; a plurality of separate electrical connectors, each of said connectors connecting said common node in a respective one of said microbeamformer patches to a respective one of said mainframe channels such that said mainframe transmitter in said respective mainframe channel provides the pulsed power supply voltage to all of said microbeamformer transmitters in said microbeamformer patch via said connector; isolation devices configured to isolate said microbeamformer transmitters and said mainframe transmitters when said microbeamformer receivers and said mainframe receivers are operative; and protection devices configured to protect said microbeamformer receivers and said mainframe receivers when said microbeamformer transmitters and said mainframe transmitters are operative.