Design of 2D Planar Sparse Binned Arrays Based on the Coarray Analysis.

The analysis of the beampattern is the base of sparse arrays design process. However, in the case of bidimensional arrays, this analysis has a high computational cost, turning the design process into a long and complex task. If the imaging system development is considered a holistic process, the aperture is a sampling grid that must be considered in the spatial domain through the coarray structure.

Design of Ultrasonic Synthetic Aperture Imaging Systems Based on a Non-Grid 2D Sparse Array.

This work provides a guide to design ultrasonic synthetic aperture systems for non-grid two-dimensional sparse arrays such as spirals or annular segmented arrays. It presents an algorithm that identifies which elements have a more significant impact on the beampattern characteristics and uses this information to reduce the number of signals, the number of emitters and the number of parallel receiver channels involved in the beamforming process. Consequently, we can optimise the 3D synthetic aperture ultrasonic imaging system for a specific sparse array, reducing the computational cost, the hardware requirements and the system complexity.