Methods of detecting and characterising a noise event are described, together with apparatus adapted to perform such methods. A method of characterising a noise event, involves locating microphones in an environment and generating a training event at a location in the environment as a reference for a noise event. A sound sample is recorded at each microphone and phase differences between the sound samples are used to establish a noise event signature for an event at that location. A noise event may subsequently be identified by taking sound samples from the microphones associated with the noise event and using phase differences between them to identify the noise event by matching against noise event signatures. A computing system adapted to perform such methods is also described.

Aspects of the technology described herein relate to apparatuses and methods for performing elevational beamforming of ultrasound data. Elevational beamforming may be implemented by different types of control circuitry. Certain control circuitry may be configured to control memory such that ultrasound data from different elevational channels is summed with stored ultrasound data in the memory that was collected at different times. Certain control circuitry may be configured to control a decimator to decimate ultrasound data from different elevational channels with different phases. Certain control circuitry may be configured to control direct digital synthesis circuitry to add a different phase offset to complex signals generated by the DDS circuitry for multiplying with ultrasound data from different elevational channels.

The invention relates to a method for processing a set of signals of a transducer device comprising a respective set of transducer elements, the method comprising the following steps: a processing step in which the received set of signals is processed to a plurality of synthetic waves, and an output step in which the plurality of synthetic waves is outputted through a plurality of channels.

Systems and methods are provided whereby a directional property of an ultrasound transducer element, such as a steering direction, is controlled according to a first driving waveform that is delivered to opposing propagation electrodes and a second driving waveform that is delivered to opposing lateral electrodes. The directional property may be controlled according a phase difference and/or relative amplitude between the first and second driving waveforms, and/or the selective actuation of one or more lateral electrodes when the lateral electrodes are defined in an array. The ultrasound transducer element may be a ring-shaped transducer element and a directional property associated with a focal region may be controlled. In some example embodiments, array elements of an ultrasound transducer array may each include propagation and lateral electrodes, with each array element being driven by respective first and second driving waveforms to focus the ultrasound energy emitted by the ultrasound transducer array.

Disclosed is a loudspeaker enclosure including: —at least two sources suitable for producing ultrasound signals, and—a supply designed to process and amplify at least one input signal so as to produce, for the sources, supply signals of the same frequency and of different phases, wherein the supply are configured to apply different gains and/or phase shifts to at least two different frequency components of at least one of the supply signals. Also disclosed is a method for signal modulation for such an ultrasonic loudspeaker enclosure.

Aspects of the technology described herein relate to ultrasound device circuitry as may form part of a single substrate ultrasound device having integrated ultrasonic transducers. The ultrasound device circuitry may facilitate the generation of ultrasound waveforms in a manner that is power- and data-efficient.

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 digital transmit beamformer for an ultrasound system has a waveform sample memory which stores sequences of samples of different pulse transmit waveforms of differing pulse widths. The memory is shared by a plurality of transmit channels, each of which can access its own selected sample sequence, independent of the selections by other channels. Waveform sample readout by the channels occurs substantially simultaneously during a transmit event, producing a transmit beam from a transmit aperture with different pulse waveforms applied to different elements of the transmit aperture. Higher energy waveforms with wider pulse widths are applied to central elements of the aperture and lower energy waveforms with narrower pulse widths are applied to lateral elements of the aperture to produce an apodized transmit beam.

A system and method for rendering tactile interaction using an ultrasound transducer array by receiving a target field; computing one or more paths of pressure focal points of varying intensity such that the difference between a result field produced by the one or more paths of pressure focal points and the target field is minimized; and controlling an ultrasound transducer array in spatiotemporal modulation mode to simultaneously render the one or more computed paths of pressure focal points. The system and method for rendering tactile interaction using an ultrasound transducer array accurately represents dynamic interactions produced in a virtual environment with a varying pressure or force field.

The aircraft intercom employs beam steerable microphone arrays and speaker arrays deployed in each of a plurality of zones within the aircraft. A speech recognizer generates recognition text from utterances picked up by the microphone arrays. A direction control processor analyzes the arrival time of signals from the microphone arrays to identify utterance location, which is then used to control the beam direction of at least one steerable speaker array. A dialogue manager processor coupled to the speech recognizer and to each of the plurality of microphone arrays and plurality of speaker arrays responds to a set of predefined keywords to selectively route a voiced communication from a first selected zone to a second selected zone using the microphone array and speaker array disposed in each of the first and second selected zones.