• Biomedical Engineering Letters
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.355-364
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• 2018

When focusing using an ultrasonic transducer array, a main lobe is formed in the focal region of an ultrasound field, but side lobes also arise around the focal region due to the leakage. Since the side lobes cannot be completely eliminated in the focusing process, they are responsible for subsequent ultrasound image quality degradation. To improve ultrasound image quality, a signal processing strategy to reduce side lobes is definitely in demand. To this end, quantitative determination of main and side lobes is necessary. We propose a theoretically and actually error-free method of exactly discriminating and separately computing the main lobe and side lobe parts in ultrasound image by computer simulation. We refer to images constructed using the main and side lobe signals as the main and side lobe images, respectively. Since the main and side lobe images exactly represent their main and side lobe components, respectively, they can be used to evaluate ultrasound image quality. Defining the average brightness of the main and side lobe images, the conventional to side lobe image ratio, and the main to side lobe image ratio as image quality metrics, we can evaluate image characteristics in speckle images. The proposed method is also applied in assessing the performance of side lobe suppression filtering. We show that the proposed method may greatly aid in the evaluation of medical ultrasonic images using computer simulations, albeit lacking the use of actual experimental data.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.203-213
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• 2023

In medical ultrasound imaging systems, Side lobes may appear if signals outside the imaging point are not completely removed during receive focusing. If the time signal of the side lobe overlaps with the time signal (main lobe) from the image point, it is difficult to completely remove it using filter processing in the time domain. However, In the receive focusing process, when time-channel signals are Fourier-transformed, the main lobe and side lobe signals are spatially separated in the spectral domain. Therefore, the side lobes can be suppressed by multiplying the image with magnitude weights, which are determined by the magnitudes of the main and side lobes calculated in the spectral domain. In addition, when the main lobe and the side lobe spectrum are adjacent, the distance weight was applied based on the distance between them. In a 5 MHz ultrasound imaging system using a 64-channel linear transducer, point reflector and speckle images with cysts of various brightness were synthesized and weights were applied to the ultrasound image. Using computer simulations, we confirmed that the side lobes were greatly reduced without affecting the spatial resolution in the point reflector image, and the contrast was significantly improved in the cyst image with computer simulations.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2002.07a
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• pp.18-21
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• 2002

As the mask design rules get smaller, the probability of the process failure becomes higher due to the narrow overlay margin between the contact and metal interconnect layers. To obtain the minimum process margin, a tabbing and cutting method is applied with the rule based optical proximity correction to the metal layer, so that the protection to bridge problems caused by the insufficient space margin between the metal layers can be accomplished. The side-lobe phenomenon from the attenuated phase shift mask with the tight design nile is analyzed through the aerial image simulation for test patterns with variation of the process parameters such as numerical aperture, transmission rate, and partial coherence. The corrected patterns are finally generated by the rules extracted from the side-lobe simulation.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2002.06b
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• pp.209-212
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• 2002

As the mask design rules get smaller, the probability of the process failure becomes higher doc to the narrow overlay margin between the contact and metal interconnect layers. To obtain the minimum process margin, a tabbing and cutting method Is applied with the rule based optical\ulcorner proximity correction to the metal layer, so that the protection to bridge problems caused by the insufficient space margin between the metal layers can be accomplished. The side-lobe phenomenon from the attenuated phase shift mask with the tight design rule is analyzed through the aerial image simulation for test patterns with variation of the process parameters such as numerical aperture, transmission rate, and partial coherence. The corrected patterns are finally generated by the rules extracted from the side-lobe simulation.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.525-533
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• 2022

We propose an effective method for suppressing both side and grating lobes by applying 2-dimensional Fourier Transform to the received channel data during the receive focusing process of an ultrasound imaging system. When the signal from the image point is focused, the channel signals have the same DC value across the channels. However, even after echoes from outside an imaging point are focused, they are manifested as having different spatial frequencies depending on their incident angles. Therefore, after the receive focusing delay time is applied, 2-D Fourier Transform is performed on the time-channel data to separate the DC component and other frequency components in the spectral domain, and the weighting value is defined using the ratio of the two values. The side lobe and grating lobe were suppressed by multiplying the ultrasound image by a weighting value. Ultrasound images with a frequency of 5 MHz were simulated in a 64-channel linear array. The grating lobe appearing in the ultrasound image was completely removed by applying the proposed method. In addition, the side lobe was reduced and the lateral resolution was greatly increased. Results of computer simulation on a human organ mimicking image show that the proposed method can aid in better lesion diagnosis by increasing the image contrast.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.105-109
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• 2018

In this paper, the performance enhancement of a time-modulated array is described. The proposed time-modulated array is based on the topology of a conventional array but uses apodized discrete time switching, instead of phase shifters, to achieve beamforming functions with side-band suppression. Numerical simulations are carried out to examine the performance of this beamforming system based on apodized time sequence of 16 elements linear array. Numerical results reveal that the proposed method provides a more flexible and accurate way of producing desired beampatterns with low or ultralow side-lobe level (SLL) compared with the conventional methods.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.816-820
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• 2011

A method for increasing the difference of side-lobe level in spherical microphone array is presented. In array signal processing, it is known that narrow interval between sensors can increase the difference between main lobe and side-lobe of array response which eventually increase the source recognition capability. Recent commercial array being used, however, have shown certain limitation in using the number of sensors due to its costs and geometrical size of array. To overcome this problem, we have adapted MEMS sensors into spherical microphone array. To check out the improvement, two different types of spherical microphone array were designed. One array is composed with 32 regular instrument microphones and the other one is 85 MEMS sensors. Simulation and experiments were conducted on a sinusoidal noise source with two arrays. The time history data were analyzed with spherical harmonic decomposition and beamforming technique. 85 MEMS sensors array showed the improved side-lobe level suppression by more than 4 dB above the frequency content of 2 kHz compared to 32-sensor array.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.506-509
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• 1997

A novel narrowband wavelength bandpass filter with a large side-lobe suppression was proposed in vertical coupler structure using coupling variation in propagation direction. Combination of a half sinusoidal distributed and a slow coupling schmes was used for narrow bandwidth and small side-lobes. Simulation showed 1.5 nm passband at 1.5507 $\mu\textrm{m}$ and the side-lobes were suppressed more than 20 dB which is two times larger than that of a constant coupling filter. A monolithic two-channel wavelength demultiplexer was proposed and theoretically investigated.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.413-422
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• 2011

An improved split-beam transducer for a 50 kHz fish-sizing echo sounder was developed. The main objective of this study was to minimize the side lobe level in the beam pattern and the distance between acoustic centers for adjacent transducer quadrants in the geometrical arrangement of array elements while maintaining a given number of transducer elements and beam width. To achieve these goals, a 32-element planar array transducer ($6{\times}6$ array with one element in each corner missing) was designed using the Dolph-Chebyshev shading function to suppress side lobes in the array beam pattern and fabricated by arranging the inter-element spacing to be substantially equal to half the wavelength using the transducer element of 0.4 times the wavelength in diameter. The performance characteristics of this split-beam transducer were evaluated in the experimental water tank of $5m{\times}5m{\times}6m$ (length${\times}$height${\times}$width). In this study, the design goal of the beam width and side lobe level for transmitting a beam pattern was initially set at $21^{\circ}$ and -30 dB, respectively. However, the measured beam width at 3 dB was $21^{\circ}$ in both directions with side lobe levels of -24.7 dB in the horizontal plane and -25.6 dB in the vertical plane. The averaged beam width at -3 dB of the receiving beam patterns for four receiving quadrants was $31.4^{\circ}$. The transmitting voltage response was 161.5 dB (re $1{\mu}Pa$/V at 1 m) at 50.23 kHz with a bandwidth of 2.16 kHz, and the averaged receiving sensitivity for four receiving quadrants was -178.13 dB (re 1 V/${\mu}Pa$) at 49.8 kHz with a bandwidth of 2.64 kHz.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.39-44
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• 1984

Three types of parabolic antenna to reduce the sidelobes and backlobe are compared to determine the best suppressive effect under same conditions which are side rim loading parabilic antenna, flanged prabolic antenna. The hooded parabolic antenna adhered polyurethan form impregnated carbon powder in shows the best shape of suppressed the side back lobes that is 5 to 10 dB suppression of sidelobe and 15dB suppression of back lobe for E-plane.