Digital beamsteering system using acoustic transducer array.

Abstract

Acoustic signal processing can be applied to sonar, acoustic communications and multimedia applications. Especially transmitting acoustic signal to the desired direction has many applications in military and industry. In this paper, we present digital beamsteering algorithm using parametric array transducers. To generate the desired beampattern, the proposed algorithm utilizes the complex weight instead of time delay. With this complex operation, many algorithms including constant beamwidth algorithm and linear constrained beamforming algorithms can be applied to make versatile transmitting beampatterns. To verify the generated beampattern, we build acoustic beamsteering system by using commercial transducers and LABVIEW software and hardware. The system includes GUI software, which allows user to change many parameters such as number of sensors, complex weight of each sensor, type of transmit data, etc. The GUI can also be easily modified and extended to accommodate the characteristics of transducers. With the laboratory experiments, we verified the performance of the algorithm and system. The proposed algorithm and system can be used to build many application systems such as multimedia, acoustic communications, and sonar system. [Work supported by Grant No. UD100014DD.]