空域预滤波的稳健自适应波束形成方法

假定的期望信号方向向量与真实信号方向向量存在误差时,常规自适应波束形成性能将严重降低,针对该问题,提出了一种稳健的自适应波束形成算法.首先利用凹槽空域矩阵滤波器对基阵接收数据进行空域预滤波,消除协方差矩阵中的期望信号分量,然后重构协方差矩阵同时反变换到阵元域,再用重构的协方差矩阵形成自适应波束权向量.由于方法消除了期望信号分量的影响,极大地提高了自适应波束形成算法对系统误差的稳健性.计算机仿真验证了所提方法的有效性.     

Performance of ultra wide band system using nonlinear receiver in the presence of interference

The performance of a time hopping combined with pulse position modulation ultra wide band system with a nonlinear receiver using an adaptive filter and a soft-limiter in the presence of narrowband interference has been considered. This system brings a significant performance improvement compared with the system that uses an adaptive filter and a linear receiver, particularly in the case of high-interference power where its absence leads to the reception loss. Also, the proposed receiver has much better interference rejection performance compared with minimal mean-square error interference rejection, in case of high-interference power (interference to signal ratios from 30 to 65 dB).     

基于卡尔曼滤波的STFT域回声抵消算法

提出了一种低复杂度的短时傅里叶变换域卡尔曼滤波算法来解决声学回声抵消问题。首先在短时傅里叶变换域建立了基于频域卷积传递函数的观测方程,并利用一阶马尔科夫模型对频域回声路径进行建模,给出了精确的卡尔曼滤波方程,并讨论了过程噪声和观测噪声的估计问题。为降低算法计算复杂度,提出了低复杂度卡尔曼滤波算法。另外,在更新滤波器时加入远端信号邻近频点的信息来进一步提高回声抵消性能。实验结果表明,所提算法对近端干扰不敏感,不需要额外的双端对讲检测算法,且比传统的频域自适应滤波算法具有更快的收敛速度。     

Direct sampled I/Q beamforming for compact and very low-cost ultrasound imaging

A wide variety of beamforming approaches are applied in modern ultrasound scanners, ranging from optimal time domain beamforming strategies at one end to rudimentary narrowband schemes at the other. Although significant research has been devoted to improving image quality, usually at the expense of beamformer complexity, we are interested in investigating strategies that sacrifice some image quality in exchange for reduced cost and ease in implementation. This paper describes the direct sampled in-phase/quadrature (DSIQ) beamformer, which is one such low-cost, extremely simple, and compact approach. DSIQ beamforming relies on phase rotation of I/Q data to implement focusing. The I/Q data are generated by directly sampling the received radio frequency (RF) signal, rather than through conventional demodulation. We describe an efficient hardware implementation of the beamformer, which results in significant reductions in beamformer size and cost. We present the results of simulations and experiments that compare the DSIQ beamformer to more conventional approaches, namely, time delay beamforming and traditional complex demodulated I/Q beamforming. Results that show the effect of an error in the direct sampling process, as well as dependence on signal bandwidth and system f number (f#) are also presented. These results indicate that the image quality and robustness of the DSIQ beamformer are adequate for low end scanners. We also describe implementation of the DSIQ beamformer in an inexpensive hand-held ultrasound system being developed in our laboratory.     

Sigma-delta receive beamformer based on cascaded reconstruction for ultrasound imaging application

A pre-delay reconstruction sigma-delta beamformer (SDBF) was recently proposed to achieve a higher level of integration in ultrasound imaging systems. Nevertheless, the high-order reconstruction filter used in each channel of SDBF makes the beamformer highly complex. The beamformer can be simplified by reconstructing the signal after the delay-andsum process with only one filter. However, this post-delay reconstruction-based design degrades image quality when dynamic focusing is performed. This paper shows that employing a simple pre-delay filter is sufficient to achieve similar performance as conventional pre-delay reconstruction SDBF, as long as the pre-delay filter provides the required pre-delay signalto- quantization noise ratio (SQNR). Based on this finding, we proposed a cascaded reconstruction beamformer that uses a boxcar filter as the pre-delay filter in each channel. Simulations using real phantom data demonstrate that the proposed beamforming method can achieve a contrast resolution comparable to that of the pre-delay reconstruction beamforming method. In addition, the hardware can be greatly simplified compared with the pre-delay reconstruction beamformers.     

Estimation of ultrasound attenuation from broadband echo-signals using bandpass filtering

A problem with video signal analysis for estimating frequency-dependent ultrasonic attenuation is that relative echogenicity versus depth curves are distorted when broadband pulses are used. In this correspondence, we present results that demonstrate improved accuracy of attenuation estimates computed from B-mode or envelope data derived after narrowband (1 MHz BW) filtering at different frequencies around the center frequency of the broadband echo signal. Based on the premise that transducer center frequencies are selected in part on penetration or imaging depth requirements, simulation and experimental results for a typical ultrasound imaging system show that narrowband video signal analysis for frequencies lower than or at the center frequency of the broadband pulse provide unbiased attenuation estimation over this depth. Filtered signals above the center frequency of the pulse yield accurate results only at shallow depths.     

舰船宽带连续谱噪声的模拟

首先对舰船辐射噪声信号的时域特性和频域特性进行了分析讨论,根据噪声的连续谱特性,提出了一种用FIR滤波器实现宽带噪声信号模拟的方法。由于舰船宽带信号的连续谱在高频段具有-6dB/oct的衰减特性,因此该FIR滤波器的幅频响应也要与此一致,且为线性相位,即该滤波器的频率响应要具有特定的形状。采用了自适应方法很方便地实现了该特定频率响应FIR滤波器的设计,再将高斯白噪声信号通过该滤波器即实现宽带噪声信号的模拟。仿真结果表明,该方法较真实地模拟出任意给定频域特征的宽带连续谱噪声信号。     

稳健宽带自适应波束形成

文章提出了宽带自适应波束形成及稳健设计方法，建立了二次约束宽带波束形成稳健设计模型，从理论上解决了自适应阵观察方向的稳健设计问题，彻底抛弃了自适应阵需要时延补偿的环节。所建立的阵处理器能抵消40dB以上的干扰，工作带宽达到两个倍频程，在理论上为被动跟踪系统设计最佳宽带接收阵和阵处理器作了准备。     

基于自适应陷波的涡街流量计信号处理系统

本介绍了以数字信号处理器为核心的实时处理系统,采用自适应陷波方法计算涡街流量计信号的频率。自适应陷波器只需估计一个参数。采用了ＤＳＰ,使得信号处理实时和系统小型化。实测结果说明,自适应陷波方法和实时处理系统是有效的。     

全设计频段束宽恒定的低旁瓣时域波束形成

为了在空域无失真地接收宽带信号和有效地抑制环境干扰,提出了全设计频段束宽恒定的低旁瓣时域波束形成方法。首先,把宽带信号分为几个子带,应用半定规划的优化方法设计这些子带中心频率上的加权,使所形成的波束主瓣与设计带宽中最低频率上的波束相同,同时约束其具有低旁瓣特征。然后,设计FIR滤波器拟合这些离散频率点上恒定束宽加权所表示的幅相加权。显然,设计得到的FIR滤波器的幅相响应给出了全设计频段上的幅相加权。最后应用该方法,针对阵元具有方向性的12元均匀离散圆弧阵,设计覆盖一个倍频程的低旁瓣时域恒定束宽波束形成器,并使用线性调频信号作为测试信号,验证了所提方法的有效性。     

Elimination of Power Line Interference on Telephone Cables Under Frequency-Varying Conditions

A new method for the elimination of power line interference of potentially time-varying frequency, phase, and amplitude on telephone loops is presented. The proposed method is based on adaptive estimation, and subsequent elimination, of the fundamental and individual harmonic components of the induced power signal and tracking their variations over time. The structure and mathematical formulation of the proposed technique are presented, and its performance is demonstrated in a variety of scenarios. Superior performance of the proposed method over existing techniques is observed throughout all experiments. The proposed algorithm presents a simple and efficient method of elimination of narrowband interference of a potentially nonstationary nature that is suitable for real-time applications due to its structural simplicity.     

基于协方差矩阵加权的任意阵列宽带恒定束宽波束形成方法

提出了基于协方差矩阵加权方法的恒定束宽波束形成方法,它适用于任意几何形状和阵元方向性的传感器阵列。设计方法为：首先将设计频带分成若干子带,采用优化方法,通过对各子带波束施加约束,设计出具有设定波束形状的各子带波束。然后,对各子带波束进行能量综合,完成宽带信号处理。该方法解决了协方差矩阵加权波束形成方法在宽带系统中会出现的频谱畸变问题．提高了其宽带信号处理性能,为此类的宽带系统设计提供了理论支持。通过计算机仿真和湖试实验数据验证了方法的正确性。     

Changes in the echoes from ultrasonic contrast agents with imaging parameters

Current harmonic imaging scanners transmit a narrowband signal that limits spatial resolution in order to differentiate the echoes from tissue from the echoes from microbubbles. Because spatial resolution is particularly important in applications, including mapping vessel density in tumors, we explore the use of wideband signals in contrast imaging. It is first demonstrated that microspheres can be destroyed using one or two pulses of ultrasound. Thus, temporal signal processing strategies that use the change in the echo over time can be used to differentiate echoes from bubbles and echoes from tissue. Echo parameters, including intensity and spectral shape for narrowband and wideband transmission, are then evaluated. Through these experiments, the echo intensity received from bubbles after wideband transmission is shown to be at least as large as that for narrowband transmission, and can be larger. In each case, the echo intensity increases in a nonlinear fashion in comparison with the transmitted signal intensity. Although the echo intensity at harmonic multiples of the transmitted wave center frequency can be larger for narrowband insonation, echoes received after wideband insonation demonstrate a broadband spectrum with significant amplitude over a very wide range of frequencies.     

Beamspace adaptive beamforming for ultrasound imaging

Applying the Capon adaptive beamformer in medical ultrasound imaging results in enhanced resolution by improving the interference-suppressing capabilities of the array. This improvement comes at the expense of an increased computational complexity. We have investigated the application of a beamspace adaptive beamformer for medical ultrasound imaging, which can be used to achieve reduced computational complexity with performance comparable to that of the Capon beamformer. The idea behind beamspace beamforming is that, instead of using the spatial statistics of the elements in the array to differentiate between signals and interference, we use the spatial statistics of a set of orthogonal beams, which are formed in different directions. This represents a shift from element space to beamspace. Because the majority of interference in medical ultrasound imaging is constrained to a limited spatial interval due to the focused transmit beam, this latter space can be reduced to a dimension that is lower than that of element space. We show, using simulations and experimental data, that this dimension can be selected as low as 3 while still achieving performance comparable to its element space counterpart.     

水下小孔径阵列远程目标检测方法研究

匹配滤波器频域自适应线谱增强方法是一种基于递归算法的非线性滤波技术,它大大提高了匹配滤波器的检测性能。针对当前该技术使用窄带信号作为发射信号存在可利用的带宽有限,不能充分发挥自适应线谱增强器性能的问题,文章提出将该技术与宽带信号相结合来检测远程目标。仿真显示,该方法在低信噪比条件下获得了较高的信噪比增益和检测概率。海试数据处理结果表明,该技术的处理增益较传统方法高6.24 dB。该方法的高处理增益适合应用在水下无人平台上,弥补了小孔径阵列空间增益不足的缺点,可以实现远程目标的检测。     

Photorefractive processing for large adaptive phased arrays

An adaptive null-steering phased-array optical processor that utilizes a photorefractive crystal to time integrate the adaptive weights and null out correlated jammers is described. This is a beam-steering processor in which the temporal waveform of the desired signal is known but the look direction is not. The processor computes the angle(s) of arrival of the desired signal and steers the array to look in that direction while rotating the nulls of the antenna pattern toward any narrow-band jammers that may be present. We have experimentally demonstrated a simplified version of this adaptive phased-array-radar processor that nulls out the narrow-band jammers by using feedback-correlation detection. In this processor it is assumed that we know a priori only that the signal is broadband and the jammers are narrow band. These are examples of a class of optical processors that use the angular selectivity of volume holograms to form the nulls and look directions in an adaptive phased-array-radar pattern and thereby to harness the computational abilities of three-dimensional parallelism in the volume of photorefractive crystals. The development of this processing in volume holographic system has led to a new algorithm for phased-array-radar processing that uses fewer tapped-delay lines than does the classic time-domain beam former. The optical implementation of the new algorithm has the further advantage of utilization of a single photorefractive crystal to implement as many as a million adaptive weights, allowing the radar system to scale to large size with no increase in processing hardware.     

基于二阶锥规划的稳健低旁瓣自适应波束形成

针对水下成像时圆弧阵常规波束旁瓣级较高,当存在强干扰时容易带来较多虚警的缺点,提出一种基于二阶锥规划的稳健低旁瓣自适应波束形成方法。该方法通过对波束旁瓣进行优化设计,可以将波束旁瓣级进行严格控制,并进一步结合协方差矩阵重构法,使波束形成器的稳健性得到提高,最后将该波束优化问题转化为二阶锥规划问题进行求解。计算机仿真结果表明,相较于其他算法来说,文中算法在波束旁瓣级得到严格控制的同时,可以在存在各类失配的情况下获得更高的输出信干噪比,稳健性更高。水池实验进一步验证了该方法的有效性,该研究成果可以在声呐成像领域应用。     

Optical BEAMTAP beam-forming and jammer-nulling system for broadband phased-array antennas

We present an approach to receive-mode broadband beam forming and jammer nulling for large adaptive antenna arrays as well as its efficient and compact optical implementation. This broadband efficient adaptive method for true-time-delay array processing (BEAMTAP) algorithm decreases the number of tapped delay lines required for processing an N-element phased-array antenna from N to only 2, producing an enormous savings in delay-line hardware (especially for large broadband arrays) while still providing the full NM degrees of freedom of a conventional N-element time-delay-and-sum beam former that requires N tapped delay lines with M taps each. This allows the system to adapt fully and optimally to an arbitrarily complex spatiotemporal signal environment that can contain broadband signals of interest, as well as interference sources and narrow-band and broadband jammers-all of which can arrive from arbitrary angles onto an arbitrarily shaped array-thus enabling a variety of applications in radar, sonar, and communication. This algorithm is an excellent match with the capabilities of radio frequency (rf) photonic systems, as it uses a coherent optically modulated fiber-optic feed network, gratings in a photorefractive crystal as adaptive weights, a traveling-wave detector for generating time delay, and an acousto-optic device to control weight adaptation. Because the number of available adaptive coefficients in a photorefractive crystal is as large as 10(9), these photonic systems can adaptively control arbitrarily large one- or two-dimensional antenna arrays that are well beyond the capabilities of conventional rf and real-time digital signal processing techniques or alternative photonic techniques.     

Spectral histogram using the minimization algorithm-theory and applications to flaw detection

In ultrasonic flaw detection in large grained materials, backscattered grain noise often masks the flaw signal. To enhance the flaw visibility, a frequency diverse statistical filtering technique known as split-spectrum processing has been developed. This technique splits the received wideband signal into an ensemble of narrowband signals exhibiting different signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). Using a minimization algorithm, SNR enhancement can be obtained at the output. The nonlinear properties of the frequency diverse statistic filter are characterized based on the spectral histogram, which is the statistical distribution of the spectral windows selected by the minimization algorithm. The theoretical analysis indicates that the spectral histogram is similar in nature to the Wiener filter transfer function. Therefore, the optimal filter frequency region can be determined adaptively based on the spectral histogram without prior knowledge of the signal and noise spectra.     

Broadband minimum variance beamforming for ultrasound imaging

A minimum variance (MV) approach for nearfield beamforming of broadband data is proposed. The approach is implemented in the frequency domain, and it provides a set of adapted, complex apodization weights for each frequency subband. The performance of the proposed MV beamformer is tested on simulated data obtained using Field II. The method is validated using synthetic aperture data and data obtained from a plane wave emission. Data for 13 point targets and a circular cyst with a radius of 5 mm are simulated. The performance of the MV beamformer is compared with delay-and-sum (DS) using boxcar weights and Hanning weights and is quantified by the full width at half maximum (FWHM) and the peak-side-lobe level (PSL). Single emission {DS boxcar, DS Hanning, MV} provide a PSL of {-16, -36, -49} dB and a FWHM of {0.79, 1.33, 0.08} mm. Using all 128 emissions, {DS boxcar, DS Hanning, MV} provides a PSL of {-32, -49, -65} dB, and a FWHM of {0.63, 0.97, 0.08} mm. The contrast of the beamformed single emission responses of the circular cyst was calculated as {-18, -37, -40} dB. The simulations have shown that the frequency subband MV beamformer provides a significant increase in lateral resolution compared with DS, even when using considerably fewer emissions. An increase in resolution is seen when using only one single emission. Furthermore, the effect of steering vector errors is investigated. The steering vector errors are investigated by applying an error of the sound speed estimate to the ultrasound data. As the error increases, it is seen that the MV beamformer is not as robust compared with the DS beamformer with boxcar and Hanning weights. Nevertheless, it is noted that the DS does not outperform the MV beamformer. For errors of 2% and 4% of the correct value, the FWHM are {0.81, 1.25, 0.34} mm and {0.89, 1.44, 0.46} mm, respectively.