Compressive sensing for phased-array acoustic inspection

A system for performing acoustic inspection, the system comprising:

• an acoustic transducer array;
• a transmission pulser circuit;
• a receiver circuit comprising an analog-to-digital converter circuit;
• a processor circuit;
• and
• a memory circuit communicatively coupled with the processor circuit, the memory circuit comprising instructions that when executed by the processor circuit cause the system to perform a machine-implemented method, comprising:
• for a sequence of different codes:
• generating an acoustic transmission from multiple elements of an acoustic transducer array contemporaneously;
• in response to the acoustic transmission, receiving acoustic echo signals from a subset of elements in the acoustic transducer array selected according to a code amongst the sequence of different codes;
• and
• summing the received acoustic echo signals to provide a summed acoustic echo signal corresponding to the code;
• and
• synthesizing a full matrix of time-series acoustic acquisitions corresponding to a greater count of elements in the acoustic transducer array than a count of the different codes, using summed acoustic echo signals corresponding to the different codes.

A system for performing acoustic inspection, the system comprising:

• for a sequence of different codes:
• a means for generating an acoustic transmission from multiple elements of an acoustic transducer array contemporaneously;
• in response to the acoustic transmission, a means for receiving acoustic echo signals from a subset of elements in the acoustic transducer array selected according to a code amongst the sequence of different codes;
• and
• a means for summing the received acoustic echo signals to provide a summed acoustic echo signal corresponding to the code;
• and
• a means synthesizing a full matrix of time-series acoustic acquisitions corresponding to a greater count of elements in the acoustic transducer array than a count of the different codes, using summed acoustic echo signals corresponding to the different codes.