Serial phase shift beamformer using charge transfer devices
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Navy
InventorJesse J. Brady, III
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A serial phase shift beamformer characterized by a charge transfer device for progressive clocked transfer of quadrature component analog samples of the scanned outputs of a multiplicity of transducer elements in a curved array. Weighting resistors effect scaling of the analog samples during parallel readout of X and Y component samples prior to summation of like components and derivation of the square root of the sum of the squares of the X and Y summations to provide formed beam amplitude signals.
Claims9
A sonar beamformer for use with an array comprising a multiplicity of transducer elements for providing electrical analog signals corresponding to acoustic energy impinging thereon, said beamformer comprising:
- timing means for generating trains of time related clock signals;
- analog multiplexer means, responsive to first clock signals, for scanning said array elements in predetermined order and generating a serialized output of the analog signals thereof;
- plural stage means, responsive to second clock signals, for taking analog samples of said multiplexer means output and shifting of said samples to successive stages for parallel read-out of said analog samples;
- weighting means, connected to each of said stages, for providing scaled analog samples in accordance with the relative position of the corresponding elements in the array;
- and
- summing means, responsive to said weighted analog samples, for providing summations of said scaled analog samples.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.