Design method for large 2-D ultrasonic arrays with controlled grating lobes levels

A major problem in developing 2-D arrays is the large number of elements required for big apertures in order to produce high quality ultrasonic images. Recent advances in transducer technology have made possible to design arrays with fewer restrictions in the shape and layout of elements. In this paper we propose to use Evolutionary Algorithms to optimize these parameters to obtain large 2-D ultrasonic arrays with a low number of elements but maintaining a narrow mainlobe and low grating lobes level.