Acoustic sensor array for sonic imaging in air

Sonic imaging in air is a field of study with growing applications such as objects location, tracking and identification. It is also used in NDE applications to detect defects or hidden objects inside the structure. The objective of this work is to present a sonic system capable of locating and imaging objects in air with high quality and good resolution. The acoustic transducer array is a novel 52 MEMS sensors array, embedded in a network enabled, data acquisition and signal processing architecture. The system operates in the 20-100 kHz frequency range and makes use of phased array techniques in order to accomplish its objectives. It operates actively where one transducer is employed to generate the scanning beam and the sensor array will capture the echoes. The system is capable of acquiring and processing with up to 800 Mbits of raw data generated by the acoustic sensor array. Beamforming, matched filtering, spectral processing, and independent component analysis are the main techniques utilized in this work for imaging, tracking and identification of objects.