A New Time Domain Technique for Velocity Measurements Using Doppler Ultrasound

A new technique for determining the Doppler frequency shift in a phase-coherent pulsed Doppler system is presented. In the new approach, the Doppler frequency shift is given directly in the time domain in terms of the measured I and Q components of the measured Doppler signal. The algorithm is based on an expression for the instantaneous rate of change of phase which separates rapidly varying from slowly varying terms. It permits noise smoothing in each term separately. Since the technique relies solely on signal processing in the time domain, it is significantly simpler to implement than the classic Fourier transform approach. In addition, the algorithm can be shown to give rigorously accurate values for instantaneous frequency and outperform the Fourier transform approach in poor signal-to-noise environments. Experimental results are presented which confirm the superiority of the new domain technique.