An imaging system includes transmit circuitry, a transducer array with an array of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer elements, a beamformer, a decoder and a display. The transmit circuitry includes a signal generator and at least one excitation coding scheme. The transmit circuitry combines an excitation signal generated by the signal generator with an excitation coding scheme of the at least one excitation coding scheme, generating a coded excitation signal. The array of transducer elements is excited with the coded excitation signal to emit ultrasound signals. The coding scheme does not introduce heating on the capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer elements. The array of ultrasonic transducer elements receives echo signals produced in response to the ultrasound signals interacting with structure and generates electrical signals indicative thereof. The beamformer beamforms the electrical signals, the decoder removes the coding from the beamformed signals, and the display displays an image with the decoded signals.

Disclosed are methods to manipulate a given parametrized haptic curve in order to yield a smooth phase function for each acoustic transducer which minimizes unwanted parametric audio. Further, the impulse response of a haptic system describes the behavior of the system over time and can be convolved with a given input to simulate a response to that input. To produce a specific response, a deconvolution with the impulse response is necessary to generate an input.

A method of fabricating and controlling a thick-film transducer array for steering and focusing ultrasonic waves within a substrate volume is provided. A ceramic film composition can be coated on a substrate volume in one or more layers. The ceramic film can be masked with a plastic sheet out of which an electrode pattern is cut. Conductive electrode material can be applied to the pattern to create a transducer array that can be polarized with an applied electric field. A method of controlling a thick-film transducer array comprises exciting one or more array elements to generate a wavefield in a substrate volume, the wavefield can be reflected by features within the substrate volume, one or more array elements can receive reflected wavefield signals, and images of the insonified substrate volume can be generated.

Mid-air ultrasonic haptic devices operate by manipulating an acoustic field to produce a haptic effect on a user. Addressing mid-air haptic devices which abstracts the most basic acoustic fundamental from that of a point to a “primitive” provides tools to adjust shape, location, and amplitude. A primitive can be designed to provide a haptic effect at the location targeted, removing the requirement of the designer needing to understand methods to create a haptic sensation. Further, a control scheme for a set of dynamic acoustic phased-array solvers is presented which enables a distributed system to compensate for unwanted time-of-flight artifacts at low cost. This is achieved by recursively subdividing the system into subtrees of phased-array nodes whose output can be estimated and the desired field drive distributed amongst the nodes. Timings of the desired field drive requests submitted to individual phased-array node inputs are then modified to compensate for the differences between wave coalescence/convergence and wave emission times, the time-of-flight, resulting in a more accurate acoustic field.

Methods and systems for ultrasound imaging and beamforming with a matrix array of transducer elements are provided. Receive signals of each transducer array element are amplified. The amplified receive signal of each transducer array element is digitized. A delay and weight are applied on the amplified and digitized receive signals. The amplified, digitized, delayed, and weighted receive signals are summed across all transducer elements of the matrix array to form a dynamically focused receive beam. An application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that is integrated with the matrix array of transducer elements performs such steps.

According to certain embodiments, a microphone array having a plurality of microphone elements is calibrated by ensonifying the microphone array at a first direction relative to the microphone array with a first acoustic signal to concurrently generate a first set of audio signals from two or more of the microphone elements and processing the first set of audio signals to calibrate the two or more microphone elements. One or more other sets of audio signals can be generated by ensonifying the microphone array with one or more other acoustic signals at one or more other directions relative to the microphone array, where the two or more microphone elements are calibrated using the first set and the one or more other sets of audio signals. The calibration process can be performed outside of an anechoic chamber using one or more acoustic sources located outside or inside the microphone array.

Arrangements for communication and/or noise attenuation within an aircraft, and aircraft and methods for making aircraft including such arrangements are provided. In one example, an arrangement includes an array of first microphones cooperatively configured to be directed towards a first aircraft operator when disposed in a first cockpit seat to receive a first communication input from the first aircraft operator. An array of first speakers is cooperatively configured to be directed towards the first aircraft operator when disposed in the first cockpit seat to provide a first communication output to the first aircraft operator.

A system and method from improving the image quality achievable with an ultrasound transducer by using a composite aperture for receiving ultrasound echoes. By using two receive cycles per vector, twice as many transducers may be used for receiving ultrasound imaging data than there are physical channels available in the ultrasound probe. An ultrasound probe utilizing a composite aperture can achieve high image quality from a system have reduced power, size, cost and complexity.

A system configured for vehicle communication includes a first smart apparatus associated with a first vehicle having a first horn and configured to acquire a first target information and a transmission direction information; a first horn control portion embedded in the first vehicle and configured to control the first horn in the first vehicle to send a first sound wave signal modulated by the first target information to a second vehicle based on the transmission direction information; and a second smart apparatus associated with the second vehicle and configured to receive the first sound wave signal and demodulate the first sound wave signal to obtain the first target information.

A system for controlling sonar beam shapes is provided. The system comprises at least one sonar transducer element having an emitting face. The at least one sonar transducer element is configured to generate a sonar beam having a path. The system also comprises a horn that is configured to rest within the path of the sonar beam. The horn is configured to reform a beam shape of the sonar beam.