Detection of time of arrival of ultrasonic pulses

Applications exist that employ transit-time measurements to determine distances to scattering objects. These include blood-flow measurements, fluid-level detection, nondestructive testing of materials, image processing of geometrical bodies etc. Many of these require extreme accuracy in measuring transit time through a medium. The system typically consists of a transmitter, a medium and a receiver. The signal sent must operate within the limitations imposed by this overall system. Under ideal conditions a finite duration pulse consisting of a sinusoidal signal is sent and received. If the transmitted signal contains an integer number of complete cycles of a single frequency, performing a correlation between transmitted and received signals can accurately recover the transit time information. The method has difficulties especially in the presence of noise. The problem is compounded if the desired accuracy is a small fraction of a single sinusoid period. Noise could cause the correlation results to be off by a complete cycle. For a one MHz signal, one cycle error corresponds to a one microsecond error. For applications requiring nanosecond accuracy, this is not acceptable. Varying the frequency content of the signal reduces the error but requires that the transmitter, receiver and medium all have a broader band spectrum. The improvements we propose here work within a narrow band while enhancing the chance of recovering the signal accurately