Patent ID: 8324787

Claim:
An electroacoustic transducer assembly for emitting and receiving acoustic radiation beams, the assembly comprising: an array of electroacoustic transducers comprising, a plurality of transducer elements each one composed of an electroacoustic element, the transducers are arranged side by side and are spaced apart along a row, the transducer array having an aperture dimension corresponding the length of the row of transducers, each transducer of the plurality of transducers having an equal pitch corresponding the transducer width in the length-wise direction of the row; a first layer into which the transducer elements are embedded, the layer is made of an electrically insulating material; and a connection line is constructed and arranged to alternately electrically connect each one of the transducers to a unit generating a signal exciting the individual transducer element to emit an acoustic radiation and to a unit processing an electric reception signal generated by the transducer element having received an acoustic signal, wherein for the aperture dimension, there is provided a rational multiple number of transducers each having a pitch corresponding to the inverse of the rational multiple, each pair of directly adjacent transducer elements are constructed and arranged to create an electroacoustic pair, one transducer element of the electroacoustic pair is constructed and arranged to only transmit acoustic pulses and the other transducer element of the electroacoustic pair is constructed and arranged to only receive acoustic pulses, each electroacoustic pair share the same connection line which branches off by means of a buffer into a transmit branch and a receive branch for each one of the transducer elements within the electroacoustic pair respectively, a preamplifier is located within the receive branch connected to the transducer element of the electroacoustic pair constructed and arranged to receive acoustic pulses.