Patent ID: 6695783
Filing Date: 2004-02-24
Classification: G01S,G10K

Abstract:
A digital multiline beamformer including a plurality of channels, each of which is coupled to an element of an array transducer to produce steered and focused digital signal samples of a plurality of beams in response to a single transmit event comprising:an analog to digital converter, coupled to receive signals produced by a transducer element, which produces a sequence of digital signal samples at a sampling rate; a bulk delay, coupled to receive the digital signal samples produced by the analog to digital converter, which applies a common steering delay to the digital signal samples; and a plurality of parallel filter processing paths, each having an input coupled to receive the delayed digital signal samples produced by the bulk delay which simultaneously produce digital signal samples for a plurality of beams which further exhibit fine focus delays calculated for the respective beams; and a plurality of summing circuits, each coupled to receive digital signal samples processed by the filter processing paths, which combine digital signal samples produced by a plurality of channels of the beamformer.