Designing an electronic readout for a directional micro electrical-mechanical (MEMS) sound sensor

• Main Author: Lim, Choon Wee.
• Other Authors: Karunasiri, Gamani
• Published: Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School 2012
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10945/10639

Locating sound sources has been of interest to the military, especially in locating sniper fire in an unconventional operational theater. Today, there are such systems to localize snipers, but they are bulky, heavy and do not employ networking, which can greatly improve the performance in terms of accuracy and reliability. Hence, there is a need to design a system that is small, compact, distributed, and reliable. In this project, an electronic readout system was designed and integrated for a directional Micro Electro-Mechanical (MEMS) sound sensor that is being developed in Naval Postgraduate School, Physics department. It is composed of the hardware and software components to process sensor signals such as amplitudes and frequencies, to aid in determining the direction of the sound. To keep the system small and compact, the electronics readout was integrated to the sensor system on the same platform. Such electrical and mechanical system integration minimizes the parasitic capacitances and enhances the sensitivity. The measured sensor response using the integrated electronics showed an improvement of nearly a factor of four larger as compared to that using an external circuit board.