scholarly journals CMUT-Based Sensor for Acoustic Emission Application: Experimental and Theoretical Contributions to Sensitivity Optimization

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 2042
Author(s):  
Redha Boubenia ◽  
Patrice Le Moal ◽  
Gilles Bourbon ◽  
Emmanuel Ramasso ◽  
Eric Joseph

The paper deals with a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT)-based sensor dedicated to the detection of acoustic emissions from damaged structures. This work aims to explore different ways to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and the sensitivity of such sensors focusing on the design and packaging of the sensor, electrical connections, signal processing, coupling conditions, design of the elementary cells and operating conditions. In the first part, the CMUT-R100 sensor prototype is presented and electromechanically characterized. It is mainly composed of a CMUT-chip manufactured using the MUMPS process, including 40 circular 100 µm radius cells and covering a frequency band from 310 kHz to 420 kHz, and work on the packaging, electrical connections and signal processing allowed the signal-to-noise ratio to be increased from 17 dB to 37 dB. In the second part, the sensitivity of the sensor is studied by considering two contributions: the acoustic-mechanical one is dependent on the coupling conditions of the layered sensor structure and the mechanical-electrical one is dependent on the conversion of the mechanical vibration to electrical charges. The acoustic-mechanical sensitivity is experimentally and numerically addressed highlighting the care to be taken in implementation of the silicon chip in the brass housing. Insertion losses of about 50% are experimentally observed on an acoustic test between unpackaged and packaged silicon chip configurations. The mechanical-electrical sensitivity is analytically described leading to a closed-form amplitude of the detected signal under dynamic excitation. Thus, the influence of geometrical parameters, material properties and operating conditions on sensitivity enhancement is clearly established: such as smaller electrostatic air gap, and larger thickness, Young’s modulus and DC bias voltage.

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 233121652097034
Author(s):  
Florian Langner ◽  
Andreas Büchner ◽  
Waldo Nogueira

Cochlear implant (CI) sound processing typically uses a front-end automatic gain control (AGC), reducing the acoustic dynamic range (DR) to control the output level and protect the signal processing against large amplitude changes. It can also introduce distortions into the signal and does not allow a direct mapping between acoustic input and electric output. For speech in noise, a reduction in DR can result in lower speech intelligibility due to compressed modulations of speech. This study proposes to implement a CI signal processing scheme consisting of a full acoustic DR with adaptive properties to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and overall speech intelligibility. Measurements based on the Short-Time Objective Intelligibility measure and an electrodogram analysis, as well as behavioral tests in up to 10 CI users, were used to compare performance with a single-channel, dual-loop, front-end AGC and with an adaptive back-end multiband dynamic compensation system (Voice Guard [VG]). Speech intelligibility in quiet and at a +10 dB signal-to-noise ratio was assessed with the Hochmair–Schulz–Moser sentence test. A logatome discrimination task with different consonants was performed in quiet. Speech intelligibility was significantly higher in quiet for VG than for AGC, but intelligibility was similar in noise. Participants obtained significantly better scores with VG than AGC in the logatome discrimination task. The objective measurements predicted significantly better performance estimates for VG. Overall, a dynamic compensation system can outperform a single-stage compression (AGC + linear compression) for speech perception in quiet.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinjiang Wang ◽  
Robert X. Gao ◽  
Xinyao Tang ◽  
Zhaoyan Fan ◽  
Peng Wang

Data communication through metallic structures is generally encountered in manufacturing equipment and process monitoring and control. This paper presents a signal processing technique for enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio and high-bit data transmission rate in ultrasound-based wireless data transmission through metallic structures. A multi-carrier coded-ultrasonic wave modulation scheme is firstly investigated to achieve high-bit data rate communication while reducing inter-symbol inference and data loss, due to the inherent signal attenuation, wave diffraction and reflection in metallic structures. To improve the signal-to-noise ratio, dual-tree wavelet packet transform (DT-WPT) has been investigated to separate multi-carrier signals under noise contamination, given its properties of shift-invariance and flexible time frequency partitioning. A new envelope extraction and threshold setting strategy for selected wavelet coefficients is then introduced to retrieve the coded digital information. Experimental studies are performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the developed signal processing method for manufacturing.


2013 ◽  
Vol 353-356 ◽  
pp. 3420-3423
Author(s):  
Yong Hong He ◽  
Peng Wei Jin

In order to separate effectively small deformation from GPS signal containing the error, Based on multiwavelet theory, the paper makes DGHM for GPS deformation monitoring signal processing, because the DGHM biorthogonal wavelet is with short support, orthogonality, symmetry ( antisymmetry ) and two approximation and other characteristics, in the same length of filtering, multi-wavelet method is more superior than traditional wavelet method, improves the signal to noise ratio, obtains higher accuracy, confirms correct and practical in the actual problem, the algorithm has opened a new way for deformation monitoring signal processing


Author(s):  
Makiko Kobayashi ◽  
Taiga Kibe ◽  
Hajime Nagata

Continuous ultrasonic in-situ monitoring for industrial applications is difficult owing to the high operating temperatures in industrial fields. It is expected that ultrasonic transducers consisting of CaBi4Ti4O15(CBT)/Pb(Zr,Ti)O3(PZT) sol-gel composite could be one solution for ultrasonic nondestructive testing (NDT) above 500 C because no couplant is required and CBT has a high Curie temperature. To verify the high temperature durability, CBT/PZT sol-gel composite films were fabricated on titanium substrates by spray coating, and the CBT/PZT samples were tested in a furnace at various temperatures. Reflected echoes with a high signal-to-noise ratio were observed up to 600 C. A thermal cycle test was conducted from room temperature to 600 C, and no significant deterioration was found after the second thermal cycle. To investigate the long-term high-temperature durability, a CBT/PZT ultrasonic transducer was tested in the furnace at 600 °C for 36 h. Ultrasonic responses were recorded every 3 h, and the sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio were stable throughout the experiment.


2011 ◽  
Vol 367 ◽  
pp. 233-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Eneh ◽  
P. Rapajic ◽  
K. Anang ◽  
Bello Lawal

The combination of MIMO signal processing with OFDM is a solution to achieving high data rates for next generation wireless communication systems operating in frequency selective fading environments. To realize the extension of the MIMO with OFDM, a number of changes are required in the baseband signal processing. The developed adaptive Multiuser Detection in MIMO OFDM(AMUD) scheme performs better compared to non adaptive MIMO OFDM, at low Signal to noise ratio (SNR), it shows good performance in computational complexity, bit error rate (BER) and capacity. Simulation results show that the developed algorithm sum rate capacity is very close to MIMO theoretical upper bound (21.5 bits/s/Hz at signal to noise ratio of 20dB) which strongly indicate it’s applicability to the uplink channel where power transmission at the mobile station is a constraint. The BER performance of the developed scheme shows that, as the number of antenna increases, the 8 x 8 AMUD provides a 2dB gain compared to known non adaptive MIMO OFDMO at low SNR.


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