• Biomedical Engineering Letters
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.355-364
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• 2018

When focusing using an ultrasonic transducer array, a main lobe is formed in the focal region of an ultrasound field, but side lobes also arise around the focal region due to the leakage. Since the side lobes cannot be completely eliminated in the focusing process, they are responsible for subsequent ultrasound image quality degradation. To improve ultrasound image quality, a signal processing strategy to reduce side lobes is definitely in demand. To this end, quantitative determination of main and side lobes is necessary. We propose a theoretically and actually error-free method of exactly discriminating and separately computing the main lobe and side lobe parts in ultrasound image by computer simulation. We refer to images constructed using the main and side lobe signals as the main and side lobe images, respectively. Since the main and side lobe images exactly represent their main and side lobe components, respectively, they can be used to evaluate ultrasound image quality. Defining the average brightness of the main and side lobe images, the conventional to side lobe image ratio, and the main to side lobe image ratio as image quality metrics, we can evaluate image characteristics in speckle images. The proposed method is also applied in assessing the performance of side lobe suppression filtering. We show that the proposed method may greatly aid in the evaluation of medical ultrasonic images using computer simulations, albeit lacking the use of actual experimental data.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.356-361
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• 2001

The effect of side-lobe on axial image is investigated. We show, using computer simulation and experimentally, that an optimized axial response can be achieved by minimized side-lobe according to the Herschel condition and that the appearance of sidelobes is decreased by balancing phase error.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.59-65
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• 2022

In this paper, a digital active phased array antenna is briefly introduced and beam forming method for a dual-channel side-lobe blanking applied to blank the side-lobe of the main beam is described. Next, the antenna performance was verified from results of design and antenna near-field measurement for the antenna main beam and side-lobe blanking beam. Then, a single-channel side-lobe blanking beam forming method was proposed to reduce the number of channels than the existing system operating dual-channel side-lobe blanking beam and weight distribution for each element of the side-lobe blanking antenna was designed with the proposed method. Finally, the designed single-channel side-lobe blanking beam pattern and blanking ability were verified and compared with the dual-channel side-lobe blanking beam. In addition, by comparing/verifying the conventional dual-channel and the proposed single-channel side-lobe blanking beam patterns measured through the receiving near-field test of the digital active phased array antenna and their ability to blank side-lobe of the main beam, validity of the proposed method for forming single-channel side-lobe blanking beam was confirmed.

• Proceedings of the KAIS Fall Conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.201-204
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• 2002

Overlay margin 확보를 위한 oversizing과, design rule checking, jog filtering를 통하여 side-lobe를 추출하였다. 이렇게 추출한 side-lobe를 extent하고, Cr pattern을 정의하여 side-lobe 현상을 해결할 수 있었다. 하지만 이 방법은 mask제조 공정이 복잡하므로 Cr shield방식의 단점인 복잡한 mask제작공정과 구조를 단순화하기 위하여 scattering bar를 이용하였다. 따라서, scattering bar를 삽입하기 위한 rule을 생성하여 metal layer에 적용하고 aerial image simulation을 통해 side-lobe 현상이 억제되었음을 확인하였다. 그리고 앞에서와는 반대로 background clear의 경우에 발생하는 side-lobe에 scattering bar를 적용하여 억제됨을 확인하였다.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.22-26
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• 2003

Overlap Errors and side-lobes have been simultaneously solved by the rule-based correction using the rules extracted from test patterns. Lithography process parameters affecting attPSM lithography process have been determined by the fitting method to the real process data. The correction using scattering bars has been compared to the Cr shield method. The optimal insertion rule of the scattering bal's has made it possible to suppress the side-lobes and to enhance DOF at the same time. Therefore, in this paper, the solution to both side-lobe and overlap Error has been proposed using rule-based confection. Compared to the existing Cr shield method, the proposed rule-based correction with scattering bars can reduce the process complexity and time for mask production.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.17-21
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• 2003

In this paper, we design an optimal planar array geometry for maximum side-lobe reduction. The concept of thinned array is applied to obtain an optimal two dimensional(2-D) planar array structure. First, a 2-D rectangular array with uniform spacing is used as an initial planar array structure. Next, we modify the initial planar array geometry with the aid of thinned array theory in order to reduce the maximum side-lobe level. This is implemented by a genetic algorithm under some constraint, minimizing the maximum side-lobe level of the 2-D planar array. It is shown that the optimized planar array structure can achieve low side-lobe level without optimizing the excitations of the array antennas.

• Proceedings of the Korea Electromagnetic Engineering Society Conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.250-254
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• 2002

In this paper, we design an optimized planar array structure with triangular lattice for side-lobe reduction using a genetic algorithm. A constraint optimization is implemented by optimally removing some outer array elements far from the array center. It is shown that only the proper array shape without optimizing the magnitudes and phases of each array antenna can give low side-lobe level with a slight main beam broadening.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.53-56
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• 2004

In this letter, we propose a novel design scheme for an optimal non-uniform planar array geometry in view of maximum side-lobe reduction. This is implemented by a thinned array using a genetic algorithm. We show that the proposed method can maintain a low side-lobe level without pattern distortion during beam steering.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.203-213
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• 2023

In medical ultrasound imaging systems, Side lobes may appear if signals outside the imaging point are not completely removed during receive focusing. If the time signal of the side lobe overlaps with the time signal (main lobe) from the image point, it is difficult to completely remove it using filter processing in the time domain. However, In the receive focusing process, when time-channel signals are Fourier-transformed, the main lobe and side lobe signals are spatially separated in the spectral domain. Therefore, the side lobes can be suppressed by multiplying the image with magnitude weights, which are determined by the magnitudes of the main and side lobes calculated in the spectral domain. In addition, when the main lobe and the side lobe spectrum are adjacent, the distance weight was applied based on the distance between them. In a 5 MHz ultrasound imaging system using a 64-channel linear transducer, point reflector and speckle images with cysts of various brightness were synthesized and weights were applied to the ultrasound image. Using computer simulations, we confirmed that the side lobes were greatly reduced without affecting the spatial resolution in the point reflector image, and the contrast was significantly improved in the cyst image with computer simulations.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2002.07a
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• pp.18-21
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• 2002

As the mask design rules get smaller, the probability of the process failure becomes higher due to the narrow overlay margin between the contact and metal interconnect layers. To obtain the minimum process margin, a tabbing and cutting method is applied with the rule based optical proximity correction to the metal layer, so that the protection to bridge problems caused by the insufficient space margin between the metal layers can be accomplished. The side-lobe phenomenon from the attenuated phase shift mask with the tight design nile is analyzed through the aerial image simulation for test patterns with variation of the process parameters such as numerical aperture, transmission rate, and partial coherence. The corrected patterns are finally generated by the rules extracted from the side-lobe simulation.