Patent ID: 7649807

Claim:
Method for locating an impact on a surface belonging to an object provided with at least N SENS acoustic sensors, N SENS being a natural integer at least equal to 2, said method being implemented by a central processing unit linked to said acoustic sensors and in which method: the sensors are made to pick up respectively N SENS signals S ki (t) from acoustic waves generated in the object by said impact, i being an index between 1 and N SENS which denotes the corresponding sensor, where k is the area where the impact occurred there is calculated, for each reference point of index j, at least one validation parameter representative of at least one intercorrelation of complex phases representative of said picked up signals S ki (t) and of reference signals r ji (t), each reference signal r ji (t) corresponding to the signal that would be received by the sensor i in case of impact at a reference point j out of N REF reference points belonging to said surface, N REF being a natural integer at least equal to 1 and j being an index between 1 and N REF , and the impact is located by determining at least one reference point as close as possible to the point of impact, by applying at least one validation criterion to the validation parameter, characterized in that said validation parameter is representative of at least one intercorrelation: PROD kj i 1 i 2 i 2p (ω)=φ S ki1 (ω)φ R ji1 (ω)*φ S ki2 (ω)*φ R ji2 (ω) . . . φ S ki2p (ω)*φ R ji2p (ω) where: φS ki (ω) is the complex phase of S ki (ω), for i=i 1 , i 2 , . . . , i 2p φR ji (ω) is the complex phase of R ji (ω), for i=i 1 , i 2 , . . . , i 2p * denotes the conjugate operator, applied to φS ki (ω) for i=i 2m and to φR ji (ω) for i=i 2m-1 , m being an integer between 1 and p; S ki (ω) is the Fourier transform of S ki (t), R ji (ω) is the Fourier transform of r ji (t), p is a non-zero natural integer less than or equal to N SENS /2, i 1 , i 2 , . . . i 2p are 2p indices denoting 2p sensors, each between 1 and N SENS .