Pipelined Sampling Techniques for Sonar Tracking Systems

Introduces fast sampling strategies for pulse-echo time-of-flight sonar using time multiplexing. As a result, multiple interlaced measurement streams are employed to achieve high sampling rates without sacrificing range accuracy. The method considers receiver blanking constraints caused by imperfect acoustic decoupling between transmitter and receivers. Furthermore, uncertainties due to measurement noise and moving targets are taken into account. The proposed approach has been experimentally validated for sampling rates of up to 450 Hz with a multi sonar system mounted on a mobile robot.