Parametric estimation of ultrasonic phase velocity and attenuation in dispersive media

In ultrasonic characterization of liquids, gases, and solids, accurate estimation of frequency dependent attenuation and phase velocity is of great importance. Non-parametric methods, such as Fourier analysis, suffers from noise sensitivity, and the variance of the estimated quantities is limited by the signal-to-noise ratio. In this paper we present a parametric method for estimation of these properties. Pulse echo experiments in ethane, oxygen and mixtures of the two show that the proposed method can estimate phase velocity and attenuation with up to 50 times lower variance than standard non-parametric methods.