To be honest, I don't know if this question is more appropriate for Stack Overflow, Software Engineering, or Physics, so apologies in advance if I guessed wrong.
I'm trying to build a 3D ultrasound machine out of commercially available parts (just to see if I can). In order to do that, I need to be able to scan an ultrasonic beam from a fixed array of transducers.
I've tried Googling beam steering techniques, and everything I find is big on theory and noticeably short on practicals.
So, is there an algorithm that will tell me the phase angle, intensity, etc. I need to use for each transducer to point the beam in a certain direction? If that's not possible (I rather strongly suspect that that one's NP-Complete), is there an algorithm that will predict the beam angle that I can use as a fitness function?