The Texas Instruments PGA460 ultrasonic sensor signal conditioner acts as the driving source and receiving amplifier for the accompanying ultrasonic transducer. An ultrasonic module, therefore, does not perform uniformly across all application types because effectiveness of the ultrasonic module is primarily dependent on the characteristics of the transducer and external factors. This application report discusses how to best select the required components, including the transducer type, driving mode, and passive tuning components. After hardware selection, this document provides the procedure to configure the PGA460 settings based on the performance requirements of the application.

Several external factors determine the overall performance of the performance of the ultrasonic module. These factors include minimum required distance, maximum required distance, target size, target material, target speed, transducer placement, environmental noise, environmental temperature, and environmental stability. Without considering these factors, the user may not be able to detect the intended target with the recommended signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio of 3:1. A large SNR is required to reliably and repeatedly detect a target when using the PGA460-based threshold mapping.