Acoustic video streaming in a waveguide
Philippe Roux, Jit Sarkar, W. A. Kuperman, William S. Hodgkiss, Heechun Song, T. Akal, Mark R. Stevenson · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2004
The use of two vertical arrays (a source and a receiver array) yields the recording of the broadband tranfer matrix in a waveguide. Using time-reversal focusing in this geometry, we have experimentally demonstrated at sea the ability to focus on any receiver array element. Furthermore, we have also shown the possibility to achieve simultaneous multiple foci on different elements of the receiver array. Much like the old dot-matrix printers that used linear arrays of pins to create pixels on paper and thus form an image, we now investigate the use of multiple focal spots on the receiver array elements to create pixels in space-time. Vertical resolution is limited by the number of elements in the receiver array, while horizontal resolution is limited by the frequency bandwidth of the transducers. This acoustic TV opens up the possibility of transmitting full-motion video through an acoustic waveguide, which is a potentially robust form of communication as the human eye is able to recognize images even after considerable loss in quality.