Beamformed sonar data is compressed before communicating the data to a storage step or to a further processing step. At lease some of the beams of the compressed beamformed data have values for at least two different ranges.

Beamformed sonar data is compressed before communicating the data to a storage step or to a further processing step. At lease some of the beams of the compressed beamformed data have values for at least two different ranges.

A processing system for processing signals from a plurality of transducers of an ultrasonic sensor in order to determine characteristic information relating to an object detected by the ultrasonic sensor is provided. The system comprises a coupling device for transforming the signals received from the transducers into pulses, and a pulse processing unit for determining the characteristic information based on the pulses delivered by the coupling device. The coupling device comprises: a thresholding unit for applying, for each signal received from a transducer, thresholding to a signal derived from the signal received from the transducer and extracting directional information contained in the phase of the derived signal; a transformation unit for transforming the derived signal into pulses containing the phase of the signal, using the information extracted by the thresholding unit.

A processing system for processing signals from a plurality of transducers of an ultrasonic sensor in order to determine characteristic information relating to an object detected by the ultrasonic sensor is provided. The system comprises a coupling device for transforming the signals received from the transducers into pulses, and a pulse processing unit for determining the characteristic information based on the pulses delivered by the coupling device. The coupling device comprises: a thresholding unit for applying, for each signal received from a transducer, thresholding to a signal derived from the signal received from the transducer and extracting directional information contained in the phase of the derived signal; a transformation unit for transforming the derived signal into pulses containing the phase of the signal, using the information extracted by the thresholding unit.

In a sonar system using a large array multielement sonar detector, the raw phase and intensity data is reduced to less than three bits per channel per slice for each of the detectors in the multielement array before the raw data is transmitted to a beamformer for transforming the data to information about the spatial positions of objects reflecting the sonar signals.

An object of the present disclosure is to provide an object detection device that can optimize data transfer. An object detection device (11) of the present disclosure includes: an acquisition unit (102) configured to acquire distance information indicating a distance from a transmission and reception unit (21) to an object based on a time until an ultrasonic wave transmitted from the transmission and reception unit is reflected by the object (object O) and returns; an output unit (104) configured to output the distance information; and an adjustment unit (103) configured to adjust the number of pieces of distance information, which is output from the output unit in each of a plurality of divided periods (S1 to S6) set to divide a measurement cycle (C) corresponding to a period in which the ultrasonic wave is transmitted and received once by a predetermined time width, to be equal to or less than a predetermined first upper limit value.

A method for use in acoustic imaging, comprising: transmitting, from a transmitter, a first sound wave pulse at a first frequency determined by a maximum sampling rate of a receiver; transmitting at least one second sound wave pulse at a frequency substantially equal to the first frequency, the first and at least one second sound wave pulses being transmitted substantially within a fraction of a sample interval of the receiver; receiving and sampling, at the receiver, a reflection of at least two of the first and at least one second pulses to generate a set of receiver samples; and expanding the set of receiver samples, based on the first frequency and a total number of the first and at least one second pulses transmitted, to generate an expanded sample set with a larger number of samples than the set of receiver samples.

An electronic device and methods for providing high resolution ranging measurements are disclosed. The electronic device includes a pulse generator, a memory, an ADC, a timer, a comparator, a processing unit, connectors for coupling to a transceiver and instructions stored in the memory. The instructions, when performed by the processing unit, performs a method that determines an estimated time of arrival of a series of measurement pulses in the signal and turns on, prior to the estimated time of arrival, the ADC to capture the series of measurement pulses using a first resolution provided by sampling the signal at a rate equal to or greater than the Nyquist rate. The ADC remains on for a fixed time period sized to capture the series of measurement pulses.

A method for transmitting data from an ultrasonic sensor to a computer system includes forming a feature vector signal from an electric reception signal; recognizing signal objects in the reception signal and classifying the signal objects according to predetermined signal object classes. The signal objects are forms or sequences of forms. At least one object parameter allocated to the signal object and one symbol for the signal object class are allocated to each signal object, or for each signal object, at least one signal object parameter and a symbol object are determined. The method further includes transmitting the symbol and the at least one signal object parameter to the computer system as data of a recognized signal object. One of the forms in the signal object belonging to the signal object class includes a peak, and one of the transmitted signal object parameters is an amplitude of the peak.

A survey system including a multibeam echo sounder having a single projector array and a single hydrophone array constructs a multi-signal message and deconstructs a corresponding multi-signal echo to substantially simultaneously perform multiple survey missions.