Ultrasonic flow meter with improved ADC arrangement
AssigneeApator Miitors ApS
InventorsJens Drachmann, Kresten Helstrup
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Transit-time based ultrasonic flow meter with analog-to-digital conversion for measuring ultrasonic signals, wherein accuracy of measurements is improved by making several measurements with different input offset, reference voltage, frame offset or sample rate in an analog-to-digital conversion stage.
Claims20
A transit-time ultrasonic flow meter comprising at least two ultrasonic transducers, an analog-to-digital converter arrangement for sampling ultrasound measurement signals from the ultrasonic transducers and a processing unit for calculating a transit-time based flow representation from the sampled measurement signals;
- wherein the analog-to-digital converter arrangement comprises:
- an analog-to-digital converter comprising an analog input and a sample output;
- and
- a first non-linearity robustness provider arranged to provide a first non-linearity robustness provision;
- wherein the analog-to-digital converter arrangement is arranged to receive at least four ultrasound measurement signals from the ultrasonic transducers and provide the ultrasound measurement signals to the analog input;
- wherein the first non-linearity robustness provider is arranged to provide an individual first non-linearity robustness provision for at least two of said ultrasound measurement signals, each individual first non-linearity robustness provision being different;
- and
- wherein the analog-to-digital converter is arranged to establish for each of the at least four ultrasound measurement signals a sampled measurement frame with at least 10 samples on the basis of the respective ultrasound measurement signal and the first non-linearity robustness provision and provide the sampled measurement frame at the sample output coupled to said processing unit;
- wherein the first non-linearity robustness provider, respectively the first non-linearity robustness provision, are selected from:
- an input level offset provider, respectively an input level offset value provided to the analog input of the analog-to-digital converter,
- a reference voltage provider, respectively a reference voltage provided to a reference voltage input of the analog-to-digital converter,
- a timing signal provider, respectively a timing signal comprising a frame offset provided to a sample timing input of the analog-to-digital converter, and
- a timing signal provider, respectively a timing signal comprising a sample rate provided to the sample timing input of the analog-to-digital converter.
A method for calculating a transit-time based flow representation in a transit-time ultrasonic flow meter comprising at least two ultrasonic transducers, an analog-to-digital converter arrangement for sampling ultrasound measurement signals from the ultrasonic transducers and a processing unit for said calculating, the method comprising the steps of:
- providing by a first non-linearization robustness provider a first non-linearization robustness provision;
- establishing an ultrasound measurement signal by one of said at least two ultrasonic transducers;
- receiving said ultrasound measurement signal at an analog input of an analog-to-digital converter of said analog-to-digital converter arrangement;
- establishing by the analog-to-digital converter a sampled measurement frame with at least 10 samples on the basis of said ultrasound measurement signal and the first non-linearization robustness provision;
- providing said sampled measurement frame at a sample output of said analog-to-digital converter coupled to said processing unit;
- repeating the above steps with a total of at least four ultrasound measurement signals, wherein said providing said first non-linearization robustness provision comprises providing a different first non-linearization robustness provision for at least two of said at least four ultrasound measurement signals;
- and
- calculating at least one transit-time based flow representation by the processing unit on the basis of a sampled measurement frame from each of said repetitions;
- wherein the first non-linearity robustness provider, respectively the first non-linearity robustness provision, are selected from:
- an input level offset provider, respectively an input level offset value provided to the analog input of the analog-to-digital converter,
- a reference voltage provider, respectively a reference voltage provided to a reference voltage input of the analog-to-digital converter,
- a timing signal provider, respectively a timing signal comprising a frame offset provided to a sample timing input of the analog-to-digital converter, and
- a timing signal provider, respectively a timing signal comprising a sample rate provided to the sample timing input of the analog-to-digital converter.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.