Optimization of Data Acquisition System Based on Electrical Impedance Tomography in Dredging Engineering

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is an advanced visualization detection technique with non-invasive, radiationless, and fast-response characteristics. As an important means in dredging engineering, EIT-based measurement can realize the estimate and computation of key flow parameters such as the flow velocity and solid phase fraction of solid-liquid two-phase flow in a pipe. Despite progress, both the data acquisition rate and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the existing EIT system are too low to meet many practical requirements. In this study, efforts are made concerning the EIT acquisition system by optimizing the sensor array, data acquisition system, and data communication module. Experimental results show that (1) the optimized system has an SNR of 73 dB, which is about 40% higher than the original system, and (2) the optimization of data transmission methods can achieve a maximum allowable transmission rate of 316.4 Mbps, sufficient to support data transmission over 1000 frames per second. Consequently, the key problems of the existing EIT acquisition system are substantially overcome.