Patent ID: 8009513

Claim:
A monostatic sodar system, comprising: an array of essentially identical individual acoustic horn transducers, each transducer comprising a circular or hexagonal active region from which sound is emitted during a sound emission and into which sound is received during a reception of emitted sound that has been reflected by the atmosphere, with each transducer occupying a generally hexagonal area of the array, in which the transducers are arranged in a generally planar grid packing arrangement comprising a series of rows of tightly-packed transducers, the transducers in adjacent rows offset from one another in a direction orthogonal to the row longitudinal axes by about half the width of a transducer; a signal generator that generates signals that are used to drive the transducers; a phase and switching control that receives the signals from the signal generator and provides transducer drive signals to the transducers that cause the array to produce at least three sequential, essentially identical and symmetric generally conical beams spaced apart in azimuth, wherein for each such beam the phase and switching control operates the transducers making up a row in unison at essentially the same frequency, with the operation of sequential rows uniformly phase-shifted relative to the immediately preceding row, to tilt the beam in altitude relative to the vertical; a receiver that receives signals from the transducers during a reception of emitted sound that has been reflected by the atmosphere; and an open-top enclosure in which the array, signal generator, phase and switching control and receiver are located, the enclosure comprising upwardly and outwardly-directed curved walls that define three flared lobes spaced 120 degrees apart, wherein one of the beams leaves the enclosure from each of the lobes.