Patent ID: 11921242
Assignee: STMICROELECTRONICS S.R.L.
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 12:
13. A device for providing an estimate of a time-of-flight between an ultrasonic signal emitted by the device and an ultrasonic echo signal returned by a target object hit by the ultrasonic signal and received at the device, the device comprising:
a conditioning and conversion system for acquiring the ultrasonic echo signal and obtaining an electric echo signal based on the ultrasonic echo signal;
circuitry for determining a noise power of the electric echo signal;
circuitry for determining an envelope signal indicative of an envelope of the electric echo signal;
circuitry for determining a portion of the envelope signal based on at least one operative parameter of the envelope signal, the at least one operative parameter being determined according to Particle Swarm Optimization;
circuitry for obtaining an estimate of the envelope signal by processing the portion of the envelope signal and the noise power of the echo ultrasonic signal according to an Unscented Kalman Filter, the estimate of the envelope signal being a regenerated version of the envelope signal based on the portion of the envelope signal and at least one Unscented Kalman Filter parameter determined according to the Particle Swarm Optimization; and
circuitry for providing the estimate of the time-of-flight according to the estimate of the envelope signal.