Influence of atmospheric refraction on the performance of an outdoor ultrasonic pulse compression system

Nowadays, many ultrasonic sensory systems are being developed to operate outdoors, where they are finding a variety of applications, such as local positioning, vehicle navigation or obstacle detection. To assure the reliable operation of these systems under any meteorological condition, it is necessary to achieve a thorough comprehension of the effects that the different atmospheric phenomena can have on the propagation of these acoustic waves. This paper deals with one of these phenomena, atmospheric refraction, and its influence on the performance of an ultrasonic system whose signals are detected by matched filtering.