PIEZOELECTRIC TRANSDUCER CONTROLLER HAVING ADAPTIVELY-TUNED LINEAR DAMPING CHARACTERISTICS, AND METHOD

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a piezoelectric transducer controller that offers a minimized blind zone by minimizing reverberation of transducers.SOLUTION: A dedicated transducer controller 302 includes: a transmitter 306 that causes reverberation of a piezoelectric transducer PZ; and a linear damping module 311 that measures characteristics of the reverberation and tunes at least one of shunt resistance and shunt reactance for the piezoelectric transducer on the basis of the characteristics. The dedicated transducer controller includes a shunt resistor, a shunt inductor, and an optional switch that couples the shunt resistor and shunt inductor in parallel to the piezoelectric transducer. The linear damping module measures at least one characteristic of the reverberation and adaptively tunes the shunt resistance or the shunt inductance in order to damp the reverberation of the piezoelectric transducer after the transmit pulses.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 3