Applied Materials, Inc.

Radian Corporation

Don T Batson

Reginald Hunter

Keith R Peterman

The invention provides a substrate surface imaging method and apparatus that compensates for non-linear movement of the substrate surface during an imaging sequence. In one aspect of the invention, the imaging method and apparatus compensate for the non-linear substrate surface movement by adjusting the image receiver trigger points to correspond to image positions on the substrate surface. In another aspect, the invention provides synchronous imaging where the distance between each image position is determined by counting the number of stepper motor steps between image positions. In still another aspect, the invention provides for asynchronous substrate imaging by determining an image trigger time between each image position and using the image trigger time to trigger the receiver at the appropriate time to accurately image the substrate surface.

Method and apparatus for substrate imaging

A radio acoustic sounding system for detecting temperature profiles in the atmosphere, includes an acoustic transmitting antenna for transmitting an acoustic signal; a RF transmitting antenna for transmitting a RF signal used to detect the transmitted acoustic signal; a receiving antenna for receiving a reflection of the RF signal from the acoustic signal; a RF subsystem including a RF sweep generator for producing a frequency modulated, continuous wave (FM-CW) RF signal, a homodyne receiver for receiving the reflected RF signal and for producing an output audio signal in response thereto, and a distribution unit for supplying the FM-CW RF signal from the RF sweep generator to the RF transmitting antenna for transmission thereby, and to the homodyne receiver as a local oscillation signal so that the received reflected RF signal is phase coherent with the transmitted FM-CW RF signal; a programmable filter for filtering out undesirable frequency components of the output audio signal from the homodyne receiver; an analog-to-digital converter for digitally converting said deliberately aliasing the filtered output audio signal under a controlled set of radar and digital sampling parameters; a central processing unit for determining the temperature profile of the atmosphere in response to the filtered and aliased output RF signal; an array processor for spectrally analyzing the digitized signal from the analog-to-digital converter via a Fourier transform so that the central processing unit can analyze the signal; and an acoustic sweep generator for supplying a FM-CW acoustic signal to the acoustic transmitting antenna, in response to the central processing unit.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Don T Batson