Improvement of signal to noise ratio and frame capture rate in magnetic inductance tomography (MIT) by exploiting transient process analysis

This paper presents a novel method to increase the signal to noise ratio in MIT data acquisition by exploiting transient process analysis. In front-end circuits for inductance measurements in MIT, a critical step is the phase sensitive demodulation, which includes a low pass filter. When the excitation source is switched from one coil to the next, a transient process occurs as the received voltage level changes. Normally, data acquisition takes place until the transient process finishes and the voltage level becomes nearly constant. In this paper, a method is proposed to increase the signal to noise ratio or the frame capture rate by exploiting the information embedded in the transient process. Simulation and experimental tests have confirmed the validity of the method; standard deviations of the measured inductance decrease more than 50%.