A looped-cascade thermoacoustic driven cryocooler is proposed and theoretically studied in this paper. This system is capable of achieving ideal acoustic fields by employing different-diameter resonance tubes. It overcomes the limitations of current configurations and possesses the advantages of high efficiency, large capacity and compact size. First, power matching between the engine-stage number and the working temperatures is investigated. Theoretical results show that either too few or too many engine stages induce negative effects: the former results in low efficiency and the latter results in over high heating temperatures. Then, thermodynamic characteristics of the three-stage system are presented. Simulation results show that a cooling power of 1.17 kW and an overall relative Carnot efficiency of 15% can be achieved at 110 K, which is superior to the performance of the existing looped configurations. The distributions of key parameters are also presented for a better understanding of the energy conversion process. Finally, the effects of the crucial parameters resonance-tube area-ratio and engine regenerator area-ratio are presented. Simulation results show that having an either too low or too high area-ratio has a significant negative effect on system performance due to improper phase relations and low acoustic impedance. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.