Patent ID: 7508737
Filing Date: 2009-03-24
Classification: G03B,G10K

Abstract:
1. A receive beamformer comprising: one or more beamformer channels  where a total number of transducer element E signal samples are coupled to a plurality of channel beamformer inputs N, each beamformer channel comprising: one or more subsummers corresponding to the plurality of sum controllers, each subsummer having a plurality of inputs corresponding to the number of channels  each input coupled to outputs from channel sum controllers that have the same timing delay and an output, each subsummer configured to sum together the delayed, apodized, and upsampled transducer element signal samples from each channel sum controllers that have the same timing delay; one or more delays corresponding to the one or more subsummers, each delay having an input coupled to an output of a subsummer, and an output, each delay configured to time-align its delayed, apodized, upsampled, summed transducer element signal sample with all other delayed, apodized, upsampled, summed transducer element signal samples in the plurality of delays; a summer having one or more inputs corresponding to the plurality of delays, each input coupled to a delay output, and an output, the summer configured to sum all of the plurality of delayed, apodized upsampled, summed and time-aligned transducer element signal samples; an interpolation filter having an input coupled to the summer output and a receive beamformer output, the interpolation filter configured to filter the summed signal samples and output a beamformed signal at the predetermined sampling rate f an apodization controller having an apodization control output coupled to the one or more beamformer channels' apodization multipliers, the apodization controller configured to output an apodization weight to each beamformer channel's apodization multiplier for each delayed transducer element's signal samples output from the delay memory; and a delay controller having a delay control output coupled to the one or more beamformer channels' delay memories and sum controllers, the delay controller configured to output signal samples from each beamformer channel's delay memory belonging to each transducer element at a predetermined delay at a rate of Nf