Acoustic sensing of proximate obstacles
AssigneeSemiconductor Components Industries, LLC
InventorsMarek Hustava, Pavel Kostelnik
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An illustrative controller includes: a transmitter to drive an acoustic transducer to generate a first acoustic burst and a second acoustic burst; a receiver coupled to the acoustic transducer to sense a first response to the first acoustic burst and a second response to the second acoustic burst; and a processing circuit to derive output data from the first and second responses in part by determining an offset frequency difference between the first and second responses, wherein the first acoustic burst has a first characteristic frequency and the second acoustic burst has a second characteristic frequency different from the first characteristic frequency.
Claims20
A sensor controller that comprises:
- a transmitter configured to drive an acoustic transducer to generate a first acoustic burst having a first characteristic frequency and a second acoustic burst having a second characteristic frequency, the second characteristic frequency being offset from the first characteristic frequency;
- a receiver configured to sense a response to each of the first acoustic burst and the second acoustic burst, each response including a structural noise component;
- and
- a processing circuit configured to subtract the response to the first acoustic burst from the response to the second acoustic burst to obtain an offset frequency difference in which the structural noise components at least partly cancel each other.
A sensing method that comprises:
- sensing a response of an acoustic transducer to a first acoustic burst having a first characteristic frequency and a response to a second acoustic burst having a second characteristic frequency, each response including a structural noise component, the second characteristic frequency being an offset frequency from the first characteristic frequency;
- subtracting the response to the first acoustic burst from the second acoustic burst to obtain an offset frequency difference in which the structural noise components at least partly cancel each other;
- and
- determining whether an obstacle is nearby based at least in part on the offset frequency difference.
A sensing apparatus that comprises:
- a means for sensing a response of an acoustic transducer to a first acoustic burst having a first characteristic frequency and a response to a second acoustic burst having a second characteristic frequency, each response including a structural noise component, the second characteristic frequency being an offset frequency from the first characteristic frequency;
- and
- a means for subtracting the response to the first acoustic burst from the second acoustic burst to obtain an offset frequency difference in which the structural noise components are at least partly canceled.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.