Passive ultrasonics using sub-Nyquist sampling of high-frequency thermal-mechanical noise

Abstract

Monolithic integration of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer arrays with low noise complementary metal oxide semiconductor electronics minimizes interconnect parasitics thus allowing the measurement of thermal-mechanical (TM) noise. This enables passive ultrasonics based on cross-correlations of diffuse TM noise to extract coherent ultrasonic waves propagating between receivers. However, synchronous recording of high-frequency TM noise puts stringent requirements on the analog to digital converter's sampling rate. To alleviate this restriction, high-frequency TM noise cross-correlations (12–25 MHz) were estimated instead using compressed measurements of TM noise which could be digitized at a sampling frequency lower than the Nyquist frequency.