The Active Sensor Project

EE271: Electronics and Electrical Techniques and Design 2

Jeswin Mathew Louise Morran Richard Morrison Ewan Moyes

1:1:1:1

Group EME 7
Completed under the supervision of Prof G. Stewart
Date Completed: 20/1/2011
Declaration
“We declare that the contents of this report are our own work under the supervision of Prof George Stewart”

Signed Date

................................ Richard Morrison ......................................

................................. Jeswin Mathew .......................................

................................ Louise Morran ..........................................

.................................. Ewan Moyes ............................................

Abstract
The primary objective of this team project was to design and construct an electronic hardware to
measure the thickness of a material when a sensor was placed on the surface; the material focussed on primarily
was mild steel and the measurement circuitry was configured accordingly. In order to make distance
measurements, firing ultrasound waves through the top surface and measuring the time taken to retrieve the
pulses was found to be a viable solution and using the velocities of sound in different materials, the thickness
was measured. The project was undertaken by a team of four over a five week period: each member
contributing to different parts of the circuitry that performed different tasks.

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Table of Contents

Declaration 1

Table of Contents 2

Introduction 3

Transmitter 4

Generation of a pulse of a given width 4

Increasing the amplitude of the signal 6

Receiver 7

Amplifier 7

Receiver 8

Comparator 9

Building the amplifier 9

Building the rectifier 10

Final Design 11

Timing and Control 12

Programmable counter 12

Distance measurement circuitry 13

Operation of the circuitry 14

Counter module 15

Testing and analysis 16

Conclusion 18

References 19

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Introduction
Ultrasound technology is widely employed in science and engineering particularly in the non-destructive
evaluation (NDE) of engineering structures and also for imaging in both technology and medicine. In the NDE
instrumentation, the sensors can operate in a variety of configurations: The pulse echo and the dual element. In
the former configuration a single transducer transmits and receives the ultrasound signals and the latter
constitutes a single transducer that only transmits the signal into the object but the instrumentation harbours a
separate device to receive the signal. The configuration used in this project was pulse echo.

The objective of this project was to design, construct and test a circuit that can fire ultrasound energy
pulse into a block of mild steel metal and derive the thickness of the block by using a circuitry that can „translate‟
the time taken for the pulse to return into a numerical distance value displayed on 7-segment LED displays. The
entire circuit consisted of three parts contributing different functionalities to the complete circuit: The
Transmission, the receiver and the distance measurement; these circuits are discussed in detail in the latter part
of the report. The paramount goal was to design a simple NDE hardware that will be able to detect cracks in mild
steel; a conceptual representation of the desired functionality of the hardware is portrayed below in Figure 1.

Value of the thickness till

the crack in mm
Hardware
Pulse echo
transducer

Figure 1. Desired functionality of the hardware

As mentioned before. The hardware consists of three circuits linked together:

1. The transmitter
2. The Receiver
3. The timing and control

The objective of the transmitter was to fire the ultrasound energy, the receiver was to receive the partial
(most of the energy is dissipated) echo of the pulse, process it and supply to the timing and control. The timing
and control uses the signals from the transmitter and receiver and converts it into a measure of distance
(thickness).

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Transmitter

Generation of a pulse of a given width

The transmitter was designed in a way which could produce a signal that can be sent through the steel,
giving time for the reverberating energy to completely decay before the next pulse was to be sent. It also had to
be able to deliver certain parts of the signal to the clock timer and the receiver, in order to synchronise the whole
circuit. The transmitter was also required to produce a pulse with a chosen period and frequency, produce a
positive clock edge pulse from this wave and finally invert and amplify the signal. The system reset output, upon
leaving the circuit, was sent through to the reset input of the counter module, thus resetting the counter module
so that it can register the new value of the thickness.

The pulse repetition frequency (PRF) must lie between 100 Hz and 1000 Hz1. An astable multivibrator
was used to produce a pulse of a chosen frequency and pulse width and a Schmitt trigger oscillator circuit to
produce the specific pulse width on positive clock edges. In order produce the pulse at greater amplitudes, a
switching circuit had to be used. The circuit was built used a switching field effect transistor to switch on the
circuit every time a pulse was transmitted.

Through research it was found that the speed of sound through steel is approximately 5900m/s2. A 1ms
delay was required1 in the astable multivibrator in order for the previous pulse to die down before the next one is
sent. This means that the period of the pulse produced must be this length of time as shown below in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Period of pulse

The relationship between frequency and period is f = 1/P= 1 kHz. Since this is known, the desired
period of the square wave was obtained by setting up the multivibrator to produce a signal at around 1 kHz.
Figure 3 shows the layout of the multivibrator, assembled using a HEF40106 chip.

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Figure 3. Layout of multivibrator
The value of R and C were investigated, and the results are compounded in Table 1.

Resistor, R () Capacitor, C (nF) Frequency (Hz)

1,000,000 1.5 582
820,000 1.5 704
560,000 1.5 1090

Table1. Results of multivibrator

The circuit was designed to give a monostable pulse on every positive clock edge. Figure 4 shows the
circuitry used to produce a pulse on every clock edge using the 74121 chip.

Figure 4. Schmitt trigger one-shot

Using the oscilloscope, the output monostable pulse was monitored. The graph output is shown below
in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Voltage Graph

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 The monostable circuit was connected through the output shown in Figure 3, it was noted that the
frequency dropped to 850 Hz; however this frequency is more suitable as it lies between the recommended 100-
1000Hz1. The measure and pause function on the oscilloscope were used to accurately measure the pulse
width, which was found to be 1 µs.

When the output voltage from the 74LS00 NAND gate chip was measured, a small voltage of 900mV
was found to be the amplitude of the signal. It was then observed that the chip was not supplied, and by doing
this the amplitude was increased to 3.92v: the pulse width was then measured to be 4.02μs.

Increasing amplitude of the signal

In this part of the circuit a BS108 transistor chip was used, as shown in Figure 6, which has a threshold
value of 0.5v, and a maximum switching value of 1.5v. This means the amplitude of the signal entering the base
of the transistor must deliver a pulse to the value of the amplitude within this region.

Figure 6. Amplifier circuitry

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Receiver Circuit

The role of the receiver is to supply the appropriate information needed for this end result to be reached. To
achieve this it must take all the reflected ultrasound pulses and convert them into a TTL pulse (Transistor-
Transistor Logic pulse) which can then be processed by further circuitry to calculate the distance travelled by the
waves and ultimately display these results on the LED display. The proposed circuit is shown in Figure 71.

Figure 6 – Suggested design of receiver circuit

Amplifier

Figure 8 -The amplifier circuit of the receiver

Figure 8 shows, the AD797 chip would be used to implement the amplifier circuit. The purpose of the
amplifier is to take an input voltage of fairly small amplitude and „multiply‟ or increase this voltage by a desired
magnitude. This magnitude can be varied to the correct size by changing the two resistors in the circuit. This is
because the closed loop gain (measure of the ratio of Vout to Vin) on the amplifier is equal to the sum of the
resistors divided by the resistance of resistor R21 as shown in Equation 1.

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 Equation 1. Closed loop gain

Receiver

Figure 9 - The rectifier circuit of the receiver.

For this part of the circuit, the TL081 chip was used. The ultrasound pulse given into the receiver circuit
will be that of a sine wave; the purpose of the rectifier is, as its name suggests, to „rectify‟ this wave. This means
that it must take the negative parts of the sine wave and invert them to the positive Y axis. This is achieved by
connecting the chip to two resistors and an OA47 diode as shown in Figure 9. The effects of the rectifier are
seen in Graph 1 and Graph 2 below:

Graph 1 - Sine wave Graph 2 - Rectified wave

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Comparator

Figure 10 - Comparator circuit of the receiver

The LM311 chip was used for this stage of the circuit. The purpose of the comparator, shown in Figure
10, was to take the new rectified wave and produce it in the form of a TTL pulse (Transistor-Transistor Logic
pulse). The reason for this is because the end stage of the full circuit is an LED display which (from digital
electronics) we know must have a signal with a sharp edge in order to trigger a clock pulse. Graph 3 shows the
effect of the comparator on the wave.

Graph 3- effects of comparator

Construction of the Circuit

Building the Amplifier Stage

It was found that the circuit should have an input voltage of approximately 5mV with a required output
voltage of approximately 5V1. By using Equation 1, the gain of the circuit was found to be 1000 at these values:

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 Given this ratio of 1000, R1 was thought then to be approximately 1000 times greater than R2,
suggesting values of perhaps 1Ω and 1KΩ. This would be perfect in theory, however inefficiencies within the
circuit components had to be taken into consideration at later stages it was found that the input must be changed
from 5mV to 500mV which took the previously calculated ratio from 1000 to 10. This was not a hugely
problematic issue as it simply meant R1 was given a value of 10KΩ while a resistor value of 1kΩ was used for
resistor R2. The completed circuit is shown in Figure 11. As required, when tested, the output voltage was
indeed found to be 5V when the input RX was a 500mV sine wave.

Figure 11 - Our completed amplifier circuit

Building the Rectifier

This stage of circuit proved to be very demanding. Taking the ratio of resistors to remain the same for the
rectifier as the amplifier, it was found the design of the circuit should have been as shown in figure 12.
Unfortunately on testing this design, a sine wave was continuously found at the output and although many
various solutions were tried and tested this problem was unable to be resolved. Time restraints played a large
factor in this problem as adverse weather conditions meant I was unable to have the necessary time in the
laboratory to appropriately investigate the issue.

Figure 12 - Proposed Rectifier circuit

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Final Design

Using some research and advice from the laboratory teaching assistants a different, slightly simpler,
receiver circuit was derived shown below in Figure 13.

Figure 13 - Final receiver circuit design

This simplified design still uses the basic properties of the receiver circuit and uses the AD797 chip for
the amplifier and LM311 chip for the comparator as before. In place of the TL081 chip however a simple OA47
diode was used. This newly derived circuit was fully tested and found to produce the desired TTL pulse from a
sine wave. The design could not be built to suit exact specification however as when using the input voltage of
500mV, the input frequency had to be altered to 1 KHz which meant that technically the wave was not an
ultrasound wave, even though the receiver circuit did serve its main purpose. The results produced when testing
the circuit are very similar to those which were expected only with differing amplitudes and frequencies.

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The Timing and Control

The timing and control incorporates inputs from the receiver, transmitter and the counter module, and is the
most vital part of the circuit as it „translates‟ the signals received from the transmitter and the receiver into a
magnitude of distance on the LED displays: once the transmitter sends a pulse to the timing and control, it
begins to count at a clock rate equivalent to the velocity of sound in the relevant materials (the reason will be
discussed later) and terminates the counting once the processed pulse from the receiver is retrieved and the
counter module converts the binary code to decimal and displays it on the LED display. This circuit consisted of
three different units performing different tasks:

1. The Programmable counter

2. Distance Measurement circuit.
3. The Counter Module

The Programmable Counter

The programmable circuit shown in Figure 14 was assembled, and used in accordance with the
distance measurement circuit. It was this set up that processed the time, and converted it into a distance. It was
made up of a crystal oscillator, in which the output was divided to produce two synchronous waveforms which
are rated to both the sound in mild steel, and in water.

+5v
n/c +5v

Oo ½ Steel

6 MHz
Oscillator HEF 4040
Module
OW 1/8 Water

Figure 14. Programmable counter

Time was converted to frequency using Equation 2. This was derived from the pulse width being equal
to the distance travelled, divided by the velocity. The minimum distance to be travelled was given as 1mm, this
is half the given value in order to take the echo into consideration, and the velocity of this in steel is 5900 m/s.
This brought us to a pulse width of 1.675x10-7. The inverse of this was then taken, which gave the frequency of
5.9 MHz; for every second the pulse travelled, the counter module counted up to 3x106 mm.

The distance was divided by two, as this eradicates the time period for the echo to return. It was due to
this reasoning that the frequency was divided by two.

Equation 2. Pulse Width

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Distance Measurement Circuit

The distance measurement unit consists of 7473 Dual J.K flip flops IC and a SN74121 IC, a mono
stable device known as the one-shot: it receives a HIGH trigger and outputs a conditioned pulse with a
wavelength that can be configured by manipulating its analogue components. These chips and their functions in
the circuit is discussed in the succeeding paragraphs. The circuit also employs the 74LS00 quad NAND IC for a
very insignificant purpose compared to the whole circuitry.

The 7472 Dual J.K IC has two negative edge triggered J.K flip flops, with a clear input, embedded into
the IC. The chip architecture for the aforementioned IC is shown below. It also has a Vcc and a ground input like
any other IC chip. Although two J.K‟s were available in the chip only one was required for the circuitry; the J.K
incorporating the inputs from pins 1,2,3,12,13 &14 was used. The clock input was supplied from the
programmable counter, the circuit Figure 15.

Figure 15. Chip Architecture of the 7472 Dual JK

As mentioned earlier the 74121 IC is a mono stable device i.e. it only has a single stable state and will
transition to its unstable state when a trigger is applied to it5. Once it‟s been triggered the one shot stays in its
unstable state for a definite period of time and this duration determines the output pulse width, is dependent on
the time constant RC; the trigger(Pin 5) is supplied by the receiver circuit. The one shot used in this circuitry has
a special kind of trigger input called the Schmitt-Trigger; this prevents any erratic switching between states due
to a slow changing voltage level at the trigger3. The chip architecture of the 74121 IC is shown below. The pulse
width of the output is manipulated by altering the Rext and Cext and the formula to calculate the pulse width for this
kind of one shot is shown below in Equation 33.

Equation 3. Pulse Width from the 74121 IC

But the pulse width was not calculated in this project because a graph of Pulse Width vs Resistance
was given. The value pulse width aimed for was 1µs and the corresponding resistor and capacitor values chosen
were 15 KΩ and 100 pF1. The chip architecture of the 74121 is shown in Figure 16.

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 Figure 16. 74121 IC4

The complete circuitry of the distance measurement with all the connections is shown in Figure 17
below. Pin 6 of the SN74121 is the output pulse given by the one shot; Pin 12 from the 7473 is connected to the
enable of the Counter Module and pin 1 is connected to the programmable counter. Also the output of the
receiver is inputted into the trigger input of the 74121 IC.

Figure 17. Distance Measurement Circuitry

The Operation of the Circuitry

1. When the transmitter fires an ultrasound pulse into the object, it also sends a trigger into the J input of
the multi-vibrator in the circuitry. This sets the J.K i.e. Q output goes to logic one and the connected
counter enable input also transitions to logic one. At the same time as this it also renders a logic one at
the reset input of the counter module.
2. The counter enable starts counting at the frequency of the same clock supplied to the distance
measurement circuitry and records the thickness of the object.
3. Once the ultrasound is „echoed back‟, the receiver circuitry converts the ultrasound‟s analog signal to a
TTL pulse of a certain pulse width. This TTL signal is supplied into the Schmitt-trigger one shot,
rendering an output pulse of 1µs.
4. The output is fed into the K input of the J.K, the logic 1 at the K input resets the system i.e. Q goes LOW
and it disenables the counter module.

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 5. The same output from the 74121 IC is supplied to the latch of the counter module but with a delay using
two NAND‟s from the 74LS00 quad NAND IC; the reason for this delay was to allow the counter module
to register the „counted value‟ and display the value on the LED‟s before latching the information.
6. The cycle reiterates itself with the transmission circuitry again firing ultra sound energy into the object.

The Counter module

Figure 18. Counter Module

The operation of the counter module is synchronised by the distance measurement circuitry shown in
Figure 18. It consists of a reset, enable, clock and a latch input. The 4518 IC‟s are 4 bit synchronised 4-bit
counters controlled by the same clock input. This module was already supplied prior to the beginning of the
project and therefore was not constructed on a breadboard.

Operation of the Module

The reset input was supplied from the „System Reset‟ output of the transmitter circuitry; the circuit sends
a logic one into the reset at the same time it is firing the ultrasonic energy into the object: a logic 1 at the reset
will clear all the counters and any numbers displayed on the LED‟s will transition to zero and thus will be able to
record the new value of the thickness after the pulse that was fired earlier is retrieved.

A HIGH at the enable input will permit the counter module to start counting and the clock input
determines the frequency at which the module is counting; the frequency of the clock is the same as the clock in
the measurement circuit.

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 Once the processed signal from the receiver was retrieved by the distance measurement circuitry the
74121 IC further manipulated the pulse width and send it to the K input; the J.K resets making the enable to a
logic 0. The same input that was wired to the K was also wired to the latch but with a propagation delay of
around 20ns with the assistance of the NAND gates as seen in the circuit diagram; the reason for this was to
permit the counter module to register the „counted value‟ and display the value on the LED‟s before latching the
information.

Analysis and Testing

The Clock Input

After the construction of the circuit, it was necessary to test the functionality of the timing and control
circuitry. This was done was testing each input and output separately. Firstly the clock input was tested and the
timing diagram obtained from the oscilloscope is shown below in Figure 19.

Figure 19. Clock Input

The graph indicates a clock rate of 3.03MHz; which is the required frequency to facilitate accurate
measurement in steel. The calculations employed to determine the value of the required frequency were
discussed earlier.

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The Counter Enable Input and the Firing pulse

Figure 20. Firing Pulse and Enable

The upper timing diagram, Figure 20, represents the input of the firing pulse into the J input of the flip
flop. Once the transmitter fires a pulse into the object it also sends a trigger into the J input. This sets the Q
output to HIGH which subsequently sets counter enable to a HIGH until the conditioned receiving pulse is
applied to the K input of the multi-vibrator, at which point it transitions back to LOW and the counter terminates
the counting. This is depicted in the lower timing diagram in Figure 20.

The Receiving and Firing pulse Inputs

The timing diagrams below shows the inputs from the firing pulse and the 74121 IC i.e. the conditioned
receiver output: the upper and the lower diagrams. The time difference between them is the duration of time the
enable stays HIGH as seen in the previous timing diagram shown in Figure 21.

Figure 21. Transmitter Pulse and 74121 IC Pulse

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The Receiver Pulse and the Latch

The input to the Latch is the same as the K-input but with a delay in the signal. The upper timing
diagram shows the pulse from the 74121 IC and the lower diagram is the voltage level taking at the node after
the first NAND gate (pin 6 of the Quad NAND); as predicted the output is inverted and the propagation delay
between the output and input is evident. This signal is inverted back to its original state by another NAND gate
before supplying it into the latch input, thus doubling the propagation delay measured in the diagram below,
Figure 22.

Figure 22. Pulse from 74121 IC, and the Output of Pin 6

The testing indicated that the circuitry was functioning as the designs intend and it was concluded that
this hardware will provide an accurate value of the thickness of the object.

Conclusion

The laboratory project was overall a success. It helped the group to facilitate the necessary skills such
as teamwork, technical thinking and sourcing information, which are all extremely paramount for future
endeavours.

Unfortunately the design brief given in the notes was unable to be carried out specifically due to a few
contributing factors, the main of which being time constraints. However the circuit was successfully designed to
give a needed TTL wave from an input sine wave but given that the input wave did not qualify as an ultrasound
wave it would unfortunately not work when connected up.

If the laboratory was to be repeated, as a team, improvements could be made with regards to
timekeeping. This could be improved by setting dates in the first week of the laboratory, in which each group
member has a target to achieve, thus giving us more time to analyse the overall outcome of the project, and
each individual part.

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References

[1] – Electric and Electronic techniques and design course notes.

[2] – http://www.library.thinkquest.org/19537/physics4.html, date accessed: 17/1/11

[3] – Digital Fundamentals: Pearson Education; 9 edition (1 May 2005) – Floyd

[4] - http://www.ti.com/ , Date accessed: 21/1/11

[5] - http://www.national.com/analog, Date accessed: 21/1/11

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