Im trying to create an ultrasound transceiver device for the purpose of detecting subsurface objects. The ultrasound would be traveling through various mediums such as dirt, concrete and asphalt, but primarily dirt. I honestly know VERY LITTLE about microcontrollers and DSP's so explaining in layman's terms would be helpful. The waves would be traveling at frequencies of up to 4Mhz if that is a limiting factor. So after inducing the ultrasound, the audio signals will be converted to electrical signals and id like to convert those electrical signals to useful information such as depth and to create a 2D image of the objects cross section.

Question:
Are there any DSP microcontrollers anyone could recommend for this application? Or would it be recommended to buy a dedicated DSP and build it from there? (would that be too difficult?)

 

Sound? Ground penetrating radar uses radio waves.

 

Sound? Ground penetrating radar uses radio waves.

To give more context, im using ultrasound to produce an image of an underground cable conduit's cross section. GPR would have trouble penetrating through metallic conduits and i dont think there'd be a way for it to create an image of the conduits cross section.

 

Dirt is going to attenuate ultrasound so much there is little hope of getting any return signal.

Sound propagates well in liquid and solid materials, but every interface (between materials of different densities) represents an energy-sapping impedance mismatch.
Air-to-dirt-to-metal etc. is a hopeless combination of mismatches.

 

This might help you decide if your idea is feasible:

https://www.researchgate.net/public...nt_of_Attenuation_and_Speed_of_Sound_in_Soils