Simultaneous transmission and reception on all elements of an array: binary code excitation.

Area of Science:

• Acoustics and Wave Propagation
• Signal Processing
• Array Technology

Background:

• Pulse-echo arrays are crucial in diverse fields including radar, sonar, seismic imaging, medical diagnostics, and non-destructive evaluation.
• Increasing element counts in arrays present challenges: reduced element size lowers signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and longer acquisition times are needed.
• Conventional methods struggle to balance autocorrelation and orthogonality properties in coded sequences due to reflector proximity limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the limitations of conventional coded sequences in pulse-echo array systems.
• To introduce a novel approach using coded sequences with receive intervals to improve SNR and acquisition speed.
• To demonstrate the practical application and benefits of this new method in a real-world system.

Main Methods:

• Development and implementation of coded sequences incorporating receive intervals.
• Utilizing binary excitation and quantization to reduce data throughput and enable higher sampling rates.
• Experimental validation using a 16-element system with a conventional medical ultrasound probe.

Main Results:

• The proposed coded sequences with receive intervals significantly enhance SNR.
• Acquisition time is reduced by more than an order of magnitude compared to conventional methods.
• Binary excitation and quantization reduce data throughput by approximately an order of magnitude, allowing for higher sampling rates.

Conclusions:

• Coded sequences with receive intervals offer a powerful solution to the challenges posed by high-element-count pulse-echo arrays.
• The method provides substantial improvements in speed and data handling, applicable across various scientific and engineering domains.
• Experimental results confirm the efficacy of this approach, particularly demonstrating its potential in medical ultrasound imaging.