The AFE’s overall noise and linearity performance is related to power consumption, and this is a tradeoff that must be considered. In order to achieve excellent noise performance, the LNA has to dissipate certain amounts of power. High linearity or large input signal ranges drive the need for the highest of high voltages, necessary to avoid clipping of the signal and to maintain the dynamic range performance. The higher supplied voltage results in increased power consumption. Ultrasound system designers now have the flexibility to design the different levels of configurability and new architectures which optimize low power and low noise. The relation between performance and power consumption is best explained with a couple of examples. TI’s AFE products in the market are now able to offer several modes of operation for noise and power optimization. This empowers the system designer with different levels of configurability for the best power and noise tradeoff. The AFE5804 is an eight channel AFE with the option of noise and power optimization. Through the use of registers, system designers are able to configure their power and noise number. A second example is the use of new architectures for power optimization. The AFE5851 is a sixteen channel AFE without the LNA integrated. This results in a new architecture for the system where the best solution is to integrate the LNA into the transducer. By doing this, the system’s noise configuration is quite greatly improved due to the signal losses in front of the LNA being minimized. The LNA is now residing in the probe and not in the line. The result is an innovative new approach to portable systems with low power consumption while maintaining the noise performance.