Abstract: The invention provides an ultrasonic object inspection system for measuring the physical properties of a test object which includes a pulse generator for sending an electrical pulse signal to a transducer. The transducer then applies an ultrasonic signal to the test object and receives an ultrasonic echo signal from the test object which is then converted by the transducer to an electrical echo signal for sending to a signal processing circuit. The signal processing circuit includes a plurality of signal processing paths with each path scaling the electrical echo signal to a different degree and including a respective analog to digital converter for converting the electrical echo signal to a digital electrical echo signal. The signal processing circuit further includes a logic circuit for selecting the output of the respective analog to digital converter that provides the digital echo signal having the greatest amplitude without exceeding a predetermined saturation threshold.

Abstract: The apparatus and method of the present invention provides an ultrasonic object inspection system for measuring the physical properties of a test object comprising a pulse generator for generating and transmitting an electrical pulse signal to a transducer. The transducer receives and converts the electrical pulse signal to an ultrasonic signal, applies the ultrasonic signal to the test object, receives an ultrasonic echo signal from the test object, and converts the ultrasonic echo signal to an electrical echo signal, and transmits the electrical echo signal to a signal processing circuit. The signal processing circuit receives and processes the electrical echo signal and comprises a plurality of signal processing paths. Each of the signal processing paths scales the electrical echo signal to a different degree and comprises a respective analog to digital converter for converting the electrical echo signal to a digital electrical echo signal.

Abstract: The apparatus and method of the present invention provides a plurality of linear amplifiers simultaneously processing an ultrasonic signal. Each amplifier of the plurality of linear amplifiers has a predetermined gain level suitable for achieving the desired output signal level for input to an analog to digital (A/D) converter for processing. The output of each amplifier is sampled by each respective A/D converter at a very high frequency to convert the analog signal output of each of the linear amplifiers to a digital signal. Logic circuits simultaneously monitor all of the output digital signals from the A/D converters. The logic circuits determine which output of the A/D converters has the greatest linear output and stores the selected output in a memory storage device.