Envelope pulsed ultrasonic distance measurement system based upon amplitude modulation and phase modulation

A novel microcomputer-based ultrasonic distance measurement system is presented. This study proposes an efficient algorithm which combines both the amplitude modulation (AM) and the phase modulation (PM) of the pulse-echo technique. The proposed system can reduce error caused by inertia delay and amplitude attenuation effect when using the AM and PM envelope square wave form (APESW). The APESW ultrasonic driving wave form causes a phase inversion phenomenon in the relative wave form of the receiver. The phase inversion phenomenon sufficiently identifies the "measurement pulse" in the received wave forms, which can be used for accurate time-of-flight (TOF) measurement. In addition, combining a countertechnique to compute the phase shifts of the last cycle for TOF, the presented system can obtain distance resolution of 0.1% of the wavelength corresponding to the 40 kHz frequency of the ultrasonic wave. The standard uncertainty of the proposed distance measurement system is found to be 0.2 mm at a range of 50-500 mm. The APESW signal generator and phase detector of this measuring system are designed on a complex programmable logic device, which is used to govern the TOF measurement and send the data to a personal computer for distance calibration and examination. The main advantages of this APESW system are high resolution, low cost, narrow bandwidth requirement, and ease of implementation.