Complete post-separation of overlapping ultrasonic signals by combining hard and soft modeling

In some ultrasonic measurement situations, an adequate signal separation is difficult to achieve. A typical situation is material characterization of thin media using pulse-echo or through-transmission techniques, when the time-of-flight in the media is shorter than the emitted signal's time support. Separated signals are necessary to obtain accurate estimates of material properties and transit times. In this paper a new method is proposed that enables complete post-separation of measured coinciding signals. The method is based on a combination of hard physical and soft empirical models, which allows for a description of both known and unknown properties making a complete separation possible. The validity and limitations of the model and the separation results are thoroughly addressed. The proposed technique is verified using real measurements on thin dispersive samples and validated using residual analysis. The experimental results show a complete separation with uncorrelated and normally distributed residuals. The method enables characterization and/or flow analysis in difficult overlapping situations.