Ben’s Ultrasound Dossier

Bat Lovers and Flipper Fanatics,

Since an unusually larger number of groups are working with ultrasound for their final
projects, and since my own ill- fated 122 project, as well as my previous research
experience, is in the field of ultrasound, I feel compelled, as the de facto expert, to give a
few hints to those who care to read them.

General Ultrasound
First, the generalities. As you obviously know by now, ultrasound is technically
considered to be any transmission in the range from about 20 kHz to 10 MHz. Although
this is a large range, all of your projects will be working from 30-40 kHz (the high-
frequency ultrasound require more parts, money, and expertise than you have in 122).
Ultrasonic waves can be generated in a variety of media such as air, water, oil, etc. But
regardless of the medium, the generation and reception of ultrasound requires the use of
transducers. These are the devices, which actually convert electrical energy (with which
all of you are experts) to acoustic energy (with which not even I am an expert) and vice
versa. Typically, a given transducer can either transmit or receive (symmetric) but not
always. You need to check the datasheets to see if yours are T/R (dual) or not. Either
way, if you using pairs, you should buy them in a matched set so that they have similar
frequency performance. Transducers come in two major forms: piezoelectric and
capacitive (or condensed). Each has it's own pros/cons which I am not going to get into
here (visit http://www.valpeyfisher-ud.com/content/tech.usonic_transducers.htm to learn
more about piezos). But, for you, the point is that all of your transducers will likely be
piezos. In fact, most of them will be made by Murata (see the datasheets for Murata's
family of transducers at
http://www.murata.com/murata/weblibrary.nsf/pdf/c18/$file/ma40.pdf). Thus, you don't
really need to be concerned about the capacitive variety. However, there is one catch. I
have more experience with capacitive transducers. In fact, although I used piezos in 122,
I am much more familiar with CMUT's which I used in my REU research (check out
http://acoustics.stanford.edu/group/projects.html). Now, this isn't a big deal in itself, but
it has already produced one major problem... I must apologize to several groups with
whom I discussed the notion of biasing their transducers. The whole concept of biasing
is predicated on the use of capacitive transducers. But since none of you will be using
said transducers, it is also completely useless to you. Thus, I correct myself -- you do not
need to bias your transducers with DC voltage. Just get the differential AC signal
directly from the two pins and you're good to go (although, you may want a DC blocking
cap just for coupling). Sorry for any confusion on this point. Please ignore my idiotic
statements about biasing. Thank you. OK, now that I've dug myself from that hole, a final
word on transducers. I STRONGLY encourage you to characterize your transducers
before you begin the project. Just plug them in and play with them. Think about what
kind of metrics you will need to know in order to implement the functions of your
circuit. A few examples, though certainly not a comprehensive list, of things you may
want to measure: max. input voltage, frequency sensitivity, directionality, range, average
received amplitude, signal-to-noise ratio, power consumption, current requirement,
minimum pulse width, minimum period, etc (notice, no bias voltage!).

Ultrasound Circuits
Now, a few words one different types of ultrasonic circuits. For transmit/receive of
ultrasound, there are generally two modes. You can either do a pitch/catch system, where
one transducer transmits and another receives, or an echo (sonar) system whereby the
same transducer that sends out the signal recovers it after reflection. In addition, you can
choose between continuous transmission or pulse (burst) mode. Obviously, some
permutations of these modes do not make sense (you can't do continuous echo. You see
why?). So, this is a design choice you will need to make up front. For perhaps obvious
reasons, pitch/catch is easier than echo, and continuous easier than burst. However, there
are distinct advantages to each that you may want to consider (yes, I am being
intentionally vague).

Ultrasound Resources
Furthermore, there are many different approaches to solving the same problems in
ultrasound. For range finding, as an example, you can choose to measure signal
attenuation and relate that to distance, or measure the time between the transmission and
reception of a pulse. The latter has many advantages, so is probably my
recommendation, but you should feel free to pursue your favorite course. The same goes
for motion detection, alarms, etc.

To that end, I want to point your attention to a couple of cool sites that discuss ultrasonic
projects (i.e. range- finders - hint, hint) and have schematics that may give you some
ideas:

http://www.mindspring.com/~sholmes/robotics/hwfrm.htm
http://www.web-ee.com/Schematics/Ultrasonic%20Range%20Finder/11d23711.pdf
http://www.efy.digitalsea.net/circuit/CIR19.HTM

- Ben