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US 4,286,462 AGranted
Acoustic detection of wind speed and direction at various altitudes
AssigneeThe University of Melbourne
InventorIan A. Bourne
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An acoustic apparatus for ascertaining wind speed and direction at various altitudes which uses back scattered acoustic waves which are formed from acoustic pulses of predetermined frequencies, are transmitted on at least two planes and the frequency spectrum and power of back scattered signals are measured, the received signal is divided into a number of discrete frequency channels and these divided signals are used to provide a velocity indication at various altitudes at sequential time intervals.
Claims14
Apparatus for the detection of wind speed and direction at various altitudes, comprising:
- (a) means for transmitting to the atmosphere an acoustic pulse having a predetermined frequency spectrum;
- (b) means for receiving the energy of said pulse as scattered by the atmosphere to provide electrical signals;
- (c) means for comb filtering said electrical signals to divide said electrical signals into a number of discrete frequency channels;
- (d) means for generating a running mean of the output signal from each frequency channel;
- and means for substracting the mean from each output signal, whereby the influence of background noise and spurious signals is reduced;
- (e) means for rejecting the output signals from the discrete frequency channels which do not satisfy predetermined noise criteria;
- (f) means for determining the difference between the center frequencies of the transmitted pulse and the respective output signals from said discrete frequency channels which are not rejected to determine a velocity estimate of the wind in the direction of propagation;
- and
- (g) means for assessing the reliability of the estimated velocity, and means for rejecting those velocity estimates falling below a predetermined level of reliability.
6 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.