Ultrasonic flow meter with subsampling of ultrasonic transducer signals

摘要

An ultrasonic flow meter is disclosed, including a switching unit for switching electrical transmission signals between a signal generator and at least two ultrasonic transducers and for switching electrical reception signal between the transducers and a receiver circuit, wherein the switching unit is coupled to an output terminal of an operational amplifier of the signal generator and to an inverting input terminal of an operational amplifier of the receiver circuit. Furthermore, a method for characterizing an ultrasonic transducer is disclosed, including the step of determining directly from one or more supply current signals for an active component of a signal generator one or more quantities useful for characterizing the transducer. Furthermore, a method for determining the time delay of an ultrasonic signal in a flow path of an ultrasonic flow meter is disclosed, including the step of comparing physically transmitted, delayed and received signals with simulated non-delayed signals.

主权项

1. An ultrasonic flow meter comprising
at least one ultrasonic transducer and a signal processing unit for processing electrical signals received from the at least one ultrasonic transducer,wherein
the signal processing unit is arranged to undersample a continuous signal from the at least one ultrasonic transducer to establish a subsampled transducer signal by digitalizing the continuous signal at a sample frequency of less than twice a resonance frequency of the continuous signal of the at least one ultrasonic transducer.