Disclosed is a SONAR system operable to transmit a pair of pulses including an up-chirp signal and a down-chirp signal wherein the down-chirp signal is a time-reversed version of the up-chirp signal. Also disclosed is a related method of operation.

An autonomous vehicle includes a first ultrasonic sensor and a second ultrasonic sensor that is included in a daisy chain with the first ultrasonic sensor, wherein the first ultrasonic sensor is electrically connected to the second ultrasonic sensor in the daisy chain by way of a twisted pair wire. The autonomous vehicle further includes an electronic control unit (ECU) for the first ultrasonic sensor and the second ultrasonic sensor, the ECU is included in the daisy chain with the first ultrasonic sensor and the second ultrasonic sensor, wherein the ECU is electrically connected to the first ultrasonic sensor and the second ultrasonic sensor by way of the twisted pair wire, and further wherein the ECU is in bidirectional communication with the first ultrasonic sensor and the second ultrasonic sensor by way of differential signaling over the twisted pair wire.

An object detection device includes: a transmission/reception unit that has a vibrator capable of transmitting and receiving ultrasound, that causes the vibrator to transmit transmission signals at different timings, and that receives the reception signals returning after being reflected on a circumferentially existing object; an acquisition unit that acquires a first distance to the object, based on a time difference between a transmission timing of a first transmission signal and a reception timing of a first reception signal, and that acquires a relative speed of the object, based on a frequency difference between the first transmission signal and the first reception signal; an estimation unit that estimates a second distance to the object at a transmission timing of a second transmission signal to be transmitted subsequently to the first transmission signal; and an adjustment unit that adjusts the number of waves or a transmission time of the second transmission signal.

This disclosure provides systems, methods, and apparatus related to an ultrasonic microphone and an ultrasonic acoustic radio. In one aspect a system includes a transmitter and a receiver. The receiver comprises a membrane. The membrane comprises a single layer or multiple layers of a two-dimensional material. The receiver is operable to receive sound waves in a frequency range, with the frequency range being the ultrasonic frequency range.

Disclosed is an echosounder configured to: a) drive the transducers of its emitting antenna to emit first and second acoustic waves having first and second frequencies, these waves being superposed over one another along an axis of superposition that is directed toward a point of the bottom of the subaquatic environment, and b) acquire an echo signal, the frequency of which is equal to the difference between the first and the second frequencies, the echosounder being configured to perform steps a) and b) a plurality of times while varying the orientation of the axis of superposition, and to determine, on the basis of the acquired echo signals, an image representative of the content of the sub-bottom of the subaquatic environment beneath each of the points. Also disclosed is an associated method for characterizing a portion of the sub-bottom of a subaquatic environment.

Techniques are provided for implementing an end-fire synthetic aperture sonar system. A methodology implementing the techniques according to an embodiment includes generating a plurality of matched-filtered signals (pings) based on correlations of a transmitted sonar signal with a plurality of reflected or scattered returns of the transmitted signal received from a hydrophone, the reflected or scattered returns associated with a plurality of locations of the hydrophone relative to a location of a transmitter. The method further includes generating a coarse estimate of the locations of the hydrophone based on incoherent cross correlations of the pings, and generating a refined estimate of the locations of the hydrophone based on the coarse estimate and further based on coherent cross correlations of the pings. The method further includes performing delay-and-sum beamforming to combine the pings, the beamforming employing time delays based on the estimated locations of the hydrophone.

A method for determining the elevation angle and/or azimuth angle of a signal received by an ultrasound sensor includes: providing an ultrasound sensor with a frequency-dependent radiation pattern; transmitting a first ultrasound wave at a first frequency; transmitting a second ultrasound wave at a second frequency different from the first frequency; receiving reflections of the first and second waves, the reflections being caused by an object; and determining the elevation angle of the first and second reflected waves based on amplitudes of the reflections of the first and second waves. Determining the elevation angle (and/or azimuth angle includes calculating a ratio between the amplitudes of received reflections of the first and second waves and mapping a calculated ratio to an elevation angle and/or azimuth angle. The mapping is based on a predetermined ratio curve or ratio dataset which associates a certain amplitude ratio to an elevation angle and/or azimuth angle.

This invention relates to a method of improving performance of a SODAR system adapted to locate discontinuities in the atmosphere by transmitting pulse compression signals such as a plurality of acoustic chirps, the method comprising: transmitting one or more acoustic chirps; receiving one or more acoustic echoes of the transmitted chirps; processing the acoustic echoes to provide an indication of the discontinuities in the atmosphere, thereby providing a wind shear profile; processing the wind shear profile to correct systematic Doppler errors associated with the acoustic echoes by: subtracting a first measured wind speed from the wind shear profile; and adding a second measured wind speed to the wind shear profile.

A method, performed by an electronic device, of determining a location of an external device includes: receiving a trigger signal, which is output at a first location; receiving, after the trigger signal is received, a first chirp signal transmitted from a first external device among at least one external device present at a different location from a location of the electronic device, the first chirp signal being transmitted according to the trigger signal being received by the first external device; obtaining, based on a time point at which the first chirp signal is received, a difference value between a time point at which the trigger signal is received by the electronic device and a time point at which the trigger signal is received by the first external device; and determining a location of the first external device based on the difference value.

An ultrasonic inspection method in which a pulse signal is output to an ultrasonic sensor to generate and transmit ultrasonic waves, the ultrasonic waves reflected or scattered by an object are received and converted into a waveform signal by the ultrasonic sensor, and the waveform signal is digitized to acquire waveform data, includes: executing modulation processing for modulating a plurality of waveform data acquired in multiple inspections and under the same inspection conditions by a phase modulation method to generate composite waveform data; and executing demodulation processing for demodulating the composite waveform data to generate compressed waveform data.