Multichannel Sub-Nyquist Sampling for Ultrasound Imaging Applications

As for the ultrasound imaging systems, reducing the high rate sampled data allows more efficient processing, which can translate to both the power consumption reduction and smaller system size. Based on the similar concepts in modulated wideband converter for multiband signals, the scheme of multichannel sampling of streams of pulses can operate at sub-Nyquist rate, which would bring about simplified hardware and robustness to channel failure. So the application of multichannel sampling to the ultrasound imaging is investigated in the paper. The ultrasound signal may be modelled as finite streams of Gaussian pulses. Each channel is comprised of mixing with a properly chosen waveform followed by an integrator. And it has been verified by the experiment that the multichannel sub-Nyquist sampling allows recovery of the delays and amplitudes of ultrasound signals with high accuracy.