Application of Golay codes to improve SNR in coarray based synthetic aperture imaging systems

Minimum redundancy synthetic aperture solutions (based on the coarray concept) are usually limited by poor signal to noise ratio. The use of pulse coding based on Golay codes can help in order to improve the signal to noise-ratio. Two solutions (2R-SAFT and 4R-SAFT) for data reduction in the beamforming process of multi-element synthetic aperture imaging are used here to reduce the system´s architecture, cost and requisites. Alongside with the application of Golay codes it is experimentally demonstrated the improvement of the dynamic range and SNR, achieving an image quality comparable to the Total Focusing Method and establishing its use for suitable real-time medical applications.