An experimental study of the fluctuations of acoustic signals reflected from ships

Results of an experimental study of amplitude fluctuations in echo signals received from ships and their wakes are presented for the cases of vertical and horizontal sounding in a wide range of high sonic and ultrasonic frequencies. Dependences of the amplitude variation coefficients of echo signals on the speed of ship motion, the sounding frequency, the duration of sounding pulses, and the height of wind waves on the sea surface are analyzed. The probability characteristics of echo signals reflected from ship hulls and from wakes at different depths are discussed.     

任意复包络信号的匀速运动目标回波脉间补偿及相干积累

现代声呐、水下制导等水声探测系统常常使用窄带脉冲、调制、编码、伪随机等种类繁多的发射信号波形来满足低信噪比检测、高分辨估计、抗干扰、主动隐蔽探测的应用需求.针对这一情况,本文研究了任意信号的长时间积累问题,给出了一种任意复包络信号的匀速运动目标回波脉间补偿及相干积累检测方法.通过构建任意发射信号波形的广义模糊函数,将匹配滤波器输出表示为所构造的广义模糊函数,使得任意复包络信号的脉压波形不仅能够用统一的数学模型来表述和计算,而且能够提供多脉冲回波的距离走动信息和多普勒频移信息,为多脉冲距离位置对齐和Fourier变换(FFT)积累提供了依据.对于用广义模糊函数表示的匹配滤波器输出,采用Keystone变换将复包络对齐,消除了距离走动,采用FFT补偿多普勒频移项,实现了任意复包络信号的长时间相干积累.对于水下探测中使用的连续波信号、线性调频信号以及复杂的m序列编码信号、Costas跳频编码信号波形进行了信号积累及检测的计算机仿真,验证了任意复包络信号的匀速运动目标回波脉间补偿及相干积累的正确性.消声水池实验验证了该方法的有效性.     

Physical and technological aspects of ultrasonic imaging of brain structures through thick skull bones: 1. Theoretical and model studies

The basic effects that restrict the potentialities of the ultrasonic imaging of brain structures by echo sounding through thick skull bones are considered. It is demonstrated that the main interfering factors are the echo signals from multiple reflections in the bone, its unknown inhomogeneity in depth, and the strong attenuation. To eliminate these effects, the use of a matched spatial processing and complex wideband signals with their subsequent correlation compression is proposed. A simulation of the proposed signal processing techniques confirmed the possibility of brain structure imaging with a spatial resolution of about 1 mm by ultrasonic echo sounding with acceptable intensities through bones up to 20 mm thick at frequencies of 1–2 MHz.     

Experimental investigation of potentialities of seismoacoustic sea-bottom sounding using coherent pulse signals

We describe the results of experimental investigations of the seismoacoustical sounding of the bottom structure of the Caspian Sea. They were obtained using a ship towed hydroacoustic emitter of LFM pulse signals in several frequency ranges of frequency band from 100 to 1000 Hz. Based on the high coherence and relatively high frequencies of emitted signals, the results point to feasibility of substantial improvement in noise immunity and resolution of sounding the bottom rocks?? structure at depths of up to 1000 m thanks to combined application of a series of procedures of coherent processing of incoming signals. The processing involves matched filtering of individual pulses, coherent accumulation of pulse trains within the horizontally uniform bottom area, and adaptive path accumulation of pulses accounted for inclination of individual reflecting layers. The resulting gain in noise immunity came to about 30 dB, which points to possibility of efficient use of relatively low-power (up to 100 W) coherent sources for seismoacoustic sounding of sea bottom at minimal damage to local ecology.     

Microstructural characterization of materials by neural network technique

Ultrasonic signals received by pulse echo technique from plane parallel Zircaloy 2 samples of fixed thickness and of three different microstructures, were subjected to signal analysis, as conventional parameters like velocity and attenuation could not reliably discriminate them. The signals, obtained from these samples, were first sampled and digitized. Modified Karhunen Loeve Transform was used to reduce their dimensionality. A multilayered feed forward Artificial Neural Network was trained using a few signals in their reduced domain from the three different microstructures. The rest of the signals from the three samples with different microstructures were classified satisfactorily using this network.     

Two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy of two-exciton resonances in semiconductor quantum wells

We propose a three-pulse coherent ultrafast optical technique that is particularly sensitive to two-exciton correlations. Two Liouville-space pathways for the density matrix contribute to this signal which reveals double quantum coherences when displayed as a two-dimensional correlation plot. Two-exciton couplings spread the cross peaks along both axes, creating a characteristic highly resolved pattern. This level of detail is not available from conventional one-dimensional four-wave mixing or other two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy signals such as the photo echo, in which two-exciton couplings show up along a single axis and are highly congested.     

Photon Echo from Localized Excitons in Semiconductor Nanostructures

An overview on photon echo spectroscopy under resonant excitation of the exciton complexes in semiconductor nanostructures is presented. The use of four-wave-mixing technique with the pulsed excitation and heterodyne detection allowed us to measure the coherent response of the system with the picosecond time resolution. It is shown that, for resonant selective pulsed excitation of the localized exciton complexes, the coherent signal is represented by the photon echoes due to the inhomogeneous broadening of the optical transitions. In case of resonant excitation of the trions or donor-bound excitons, the Zeeman splitting of the resident electron ground state levels under the applied transverse magnetic field results in quantum beats of photon echo amplitude at the Larmor precession frequency. Application of magnetic field makes it possible to transfer coherently the optical excitation into the spin ensemble of the resident electrons and to observe a long-lived photon echo signal. The described technique can be used as a high-resolution spectroscopy of the energy splittings in the ground state of the system. Next, we consider the Rabi oscillations and their damping under excitation with intensive optical pulses for the excitons complexes with a different degree of localization. It is shown that damping of the echo signal with increase of the excitation pulse intensity is strongly manifested for excitons, while on trions and donor-bound excitons this effect is substantially weaker.     

Magnetic resonance sounding: Enhanced modeling of a phase shift

Magnetic resonance sounding (MRS) is a geophysical method for noninvasive groundwater investigation. A wire loop on the surface is energized by a pulse of oscillating current. After the pulse is cut off, the free induction decay signal from groundwater is measured with the same loop. The Larmor frequency depends on the Earth’s magnetic field and varies between 800 and 2800 Hz around the world. Available mathematical models assume that the geomagnetic field is constant and the pulse frequency is equal to the Larmor frequency. These assumptions allow calculation of the phase shift of the signal caused by only the electrical conductivity of the subsurface. However, the existing models are simplified. The Earth’s magnetic field may be locally modified by rocks and often is not homogeneous over the volume investigated by MRS. It may also vary in time. A nonconstant geomagnetic field is changing the Larmor frequency at 1 to 5 Hz during one sounding, whilst the pulse frequency is set in the beginning of the sounding. Under these conditions, the assumption of zero frequency offset between the pulse frequency and the Larmor frequency is often unsound. The nonzero frequency offset causes a phase shift in the MRS signal comparable with the shift caused by electrically conductive rocks. For increasing the accuracy of phase shift modeling, and enhanced mathematical model in which the frequency offset is taken into account has been developed. With the enhanced model, the phase of the MRS signal can be calculated with better accuracy. Field measurements reveal a good correlation between experimental and theoretical signals.     

混沌噪声背景下微弱脉冲信号的检测及恢复

构建了一种在混沌噪声背景下检测并恢复微弱脉冲信号的模型.首先,基于混沌信号的短期可预测性及其对微小扰动的敏感性,对观测信号进行相空间重构、建立局域线性自回归模型进行单步预测,得到预测误差,并利用假设检验方法从预测误差中检测观测信号中是否含有微弱脉冲信号.然后,对微弱脉冲信号建立单点跳跃模型,并融合局域线性自回归模型,构成双局域线性(DLL)模型,以极小化DLL模型的均方预测误差为目标进行优化,采用向后拟合算法估计模型的参数,并最终恢复出混沌噪声背景下的微弱脉冲信号.仿真实验结果表明本文所建的模型能够有效地检测并恢复出混沌噪声背景中的微弱脉冲信号.     

Raman heterodyne detected magnetic resonance: I. CW and coherent transient measurements

We report cw and coherent transient studies on electronic and nuclear magnetic transitions of the nitrogen-vacancy centre in diamond using an optical-rf double resonance technique: Raman heterodyne detection. Emphasis is placed on the coherent transient measurements to illustrate the versatility of the detection technique, which is not only very sensitive but is also ideal in this case since it is based on a coherent process. In this paper we show that Raman heterodyne detection can be used to obtain a wide range of signals including nutation, spin echo, rotary echo and spin locking in a single system. Finally an example of using coherent transients to test the validity of the Bloch equation is given.     

Study of the phase characteristics of echo signals for vertical sounding of water with signals with linear frequency modulation

We study the phase characteristics of echo signals during vertical acoustic sounding of a water medium with narrowly directed emission. We experimentally demonstrate the possibility of measuring the dependence of the phase of echo signals on the delay for a probe signal with linear frequency modulation. We substantiate the possibility of remote determination of sound velocity variations in water.     

Simulation of coherent responses of resonant media excited by a series of ultrashort laser pulses

A technique for the numerical simulation of coherent optical responses of the photon echo type formed in resonance media with strong inhomogeneous broadening under the action of femtosecond laser pulses is developed. This approach is based on solving the Maxwell-Bloch equations using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method without application of a fast rotating field and slowly varying envelope approximations. The method can be used to simulate coherent responses in different resonance media with a complex structure of energy levels. The technique was validated using the example of describing experiments on narrowing a photon echo pulse and femtosecond echo processing.     

Observation of a new coherent transient in NMR — Two-pulse nutational stimulated echo in the angular distribution of gamma-radiation from oriented nuclei

A new coherent transient in NMR, the two-pulse nutational stimulated echo is reported for the ferromagnetic system⁵⁰CoFe, observed by monitoring the nuclear spin dynamics as a function of the second pulse duration via anisotropic gamma quanta from thermally oriented radioactive nuclei,⁶⁰Co. The mechanism of echo formation under strong Larmor inhomogeneous broadening and the secondary but important role of inhomogeneity associated with the rf amplitude (Rabi freqeuncy) due to skin-effect are investigated via the method of concatenation of perturbation factors in the statistical tensor formalism. For those experiments performed on time scales short compared with irreversible relaxation the theoretical predictions and subsequent experimental time-domain signals are in excellent accord. Remarkable constancy of amplitude of the new gamma-detected two-pulse echo with increase of interpulse time interval is observed, the longitudinal relaxation being manifest in the off-echo signals. Comparisons are made with NMRON four-pulse stimulated off-echo decay (analogous with conventional NMR three pulse stimulated echo) which is also sensitive to longitudinal relaxation, and with three-pulse on-echo decay (analogous with conventional NMR two-pulse Hahn echo) which measures transverse relaxation.     

Stimulated Raman spectroscopy using chirped pulses

We present a detailed theoretical and experimental characterization of a new methodology for stimulated Raman spectroscopy using two duplicates of a chirped, broadband laser pulse. Because of the linear variation of laser frequency with time (‘chirp’), when the pulses are delayed relative to one another, there exists a narrow bandwidth, instantaneous frequency difference between them, which, when resonant with a Raman‐active vibration in the sample, generates stimulated Raman gain in one pulse and inverse Raman loss in the other. This method has previously been used for coherent Raman imaging and termed ‘spectral focusing’. Here, gain and loss signals are spectrally resolved, and the spectrally integrated signals are used to determine the spectral resolution of the measured Raman spectrum. Material dispersion is used to generate a range of pulse durations, and it is shown that there is only a small change in the magnitude of the signal and the spectral resolution as the pulse is stretched from 800 to 1800 fs in duration. A quantitative theory of the technique is developed, which reproduces both the magnitude and linewidth of the experimental signals when third‐order dispersion and phase‐matching efficiency are included. The theoretical calculations show that both spectral resolution and signal magnitude are severely hampered by the third‐order dispersion in the laser pulse, and hence, a minimal amount of chirp produces the most signal with only a slight loss of spectral resolution. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nonlinear chirp compensation by scan filtering in SAIL

The nonlinear chirp of a tunable laser generates the phase errors and damages the range resolution in synthetic aperture imaging ladar (SAIL). In the compensation algorithms establishing matched and nonmatched reference paths, the phase errors were compensated in a whole echo pulse. In this paper a compensation algorithm of nonlinear chirp by scan filtering is proposed.The heterodyne signals of different echoes from all target points in a footprint are scan filtered from one whole heterodyne signal of one whole echo pulse in the spectrum. The phase errors of these heterodyne signals are measured by phase-shifting algorithm in reference path and compensated separately. Then all the compensated signals are combined back into a whole heterodyne pulse and compressed in range. After all heterodyne pulses are compressed in range, the azimuth compensation is followed.The mathematical flow of this compensation algorithm is established. The simulation of the airborne SAIL model validates the feasibility, and the bandwidth of range compression decreases obviously. The effects of nonlinear chirp and the pass bandwidth of the scan filter are analyzed and discussed finally.     

脉冲激光测距回波信号时间选通处理技术

为了降低高重频脉冲激光测距回波信号的误识别率，提高测距性能，对高重频脉冲激光测距回波信号调理技术进行深入研究。采用FPGA作为主控芯片，产生激光调制脉冲，并根据被测距离3.33 μs～33.33 μs时间选通方波信号，驱动开关芯片产生与量程关联的时间波门，有效滤除脉冲回波中的干扰脉冲，该方法改进了常规脉冲激光测距信号处理系统的自动增益控制环节。测试实验结果表明:在脉冲回波信号60 dB的动态范围内，可有效滤除回波信号中引入的干扰脉冲，极大地降低了干扰脉冲误识别造成粗大误差的可能性。该方法可推广应用于脉冲激光测距信号处理系统，使系统测距精度提高12.6%。     

Measurement of the echo reduction for underwater acoustic passive materials by using the time reversal technique

A measuring method of the echo reduction of passive materials by using the time reversal(TR) technique is presented. To measure the echo reduction of a sample with this approach, the received signals are firstly focused according to the TR theory. Then, the sample is removed and the TR processing is again employed to realize the focus of the received signal.Finally, the echo reduction of the sample is evaluated with these focusing signals. Besides, to calibrate the measured echo reduction via the TR technique, a standard sample is employed to measure a constant coefficient that only depends on the measurement environment. An aluminum plate sample and a steel plate sample with the same size of 1.1 mxl.O m x0.005 m axe tested in a wave guide tank. The experimental results show that the calibrated values are well consistent with theoretical results under the free field at the measured frequency range of0.5-20 kHz. The relative errors of all the measured values are less than 10% and the values of the expanded uncertainty are less than 1.5 dB. The TR processing focuses the energy in spatial domain and temporal domain, so it can be used to measure the echo reduction of passive materials in the environments with reflections induced by boundaries and low frequency sources.     

Physical mechanisms of spin echoes. I. Two-pulse locked echo

The locked echo is the result of the application, to an inhomogeneously-broadened system, of a pulse sequence consisting of a short π/2 pulse, a free evolution period of length r and a long pulse with high turning angle (HTA). In this paper the nature and features of the signal detected after such a pulse sequence are reported upon by analysing the underlying physical mechanisms in the framework of the density operator formalism. It is found that the total signal does not contain any contribution from Free Induction Decay (FID)-like or anti-echo signals but comprises a group of several distinct echoes: the true simultaneous locked echo, arising from locked magnetization, and two or three non-simultaneous, oscillatory echoes similar to those observed in the single-pulse experiment. Properties of these echoes are deduced from the structure of the density operator at the end of the experiment. Extensive numerical simulations provide independent evidence of the correctness of the developed theory, display the variety of patterns shown by the locked echo when experimental conditions are changed, and also permit one to investigate the locked echo shape beyond the approximations introduced in the theory.     

一种降低井下核磁共振振铃的新方法

核磁共振（NMR）测井仪在测量过程中,振铃噪声幅度一般很高,会影响回波信号的检测. 常用的交叉相位对脉冲序列（PAPS）虽然能有效地降低振铃影响,但由于振铃与频率有关,使PAPS叠加只能在同频率之间展开,大大降低了NMR测井的纵向分辨率. 利用回波信号和振铃噪声的相位特征,设计了一种脉冲序列,采用PAPS和回波间叠加相结合的方式降低振铃噪声. 研究表明,相对于PAPS技术,提高了测量效率,同时提高了回波串的信噪比和NMR测井的纵向分辨率.