Uniaxial Acoustic Vector Sensors for direction-of-arrival estimation

Abstract

In this paper, a specific reduced-channel Acoustic Vector Sensor (AVS) is proposed comprising one omni-directional microphone and only one particle velocity transducer, such that it can have an arbitrary orientation. Such a reduced transducer configuration is referred to as a Uniaxial AVS (U-AVS). The DOA performance of an array of U-AVSs is analyzed through its beampattern and compared to conventional configurations. It is shown that the U-AVS array beampattern results in an asymptotically biased estimate of the source location and it can be varied by choosing the orientation angles of the particle velocity transducers. Analytical expressions for the asymptotic bias of classical beamforming are proposed and verified both numerically as well as experimentally for Uniform Linear Arrays (ULAs). Furthermore, the Cramér-Rao Bound (CRB) and Mean Square Error (MSE) expressions are derived for a U-AVS array under a single source scenario and they are numerically evaluated for ULA. The implications of changing the orientations of the U-AVSs in the array on the MSE are discussed as well.

Modeling and optimization of directive acoustical particle velocity sensors for ultrasonic applications

“…Recently, the possibility of fabricating APV sensors with a CMOS-compatible fabrication technique has been demonstrated [14][15][16]. APV sensors have been proposed for diverse applications, including acoustic impedance and absorption coefficient measurement [17][18][19], sound intensity measurement [20], direction of arrival estimation [21], near-field acoustic holography [22,23] and noise source localization [24]. A field in which the possibility of using APV sensors has not yet been explored is that of ultrasounds.…”

Blind Direction-of-Arrival Estimation in Acoustic Vector-Sensor Arrays via Tensor Decomposition and Kullback-Leibler Divergence Covariance Fitting

“…For the extended Multiple-Sources Multiple-Sensors (MSMS) scenario, Hawkes and Nehorai considered in [17] both the conventional and the minimum-variance distortionless response beamforming DOAs estimates to demonstrate the improvement attained by using AVSs rather than traditional pressure sensors. Following this work, an abundance of methods have been proposed for various specific scenarios (whether for array-or signal-related properties), such as linear [18], circular [19]- [21], sparse [22]- [24] and nested [25]- [27] arrays, coherent signals [28]- [30], one-bit measurements [31] and a variety of others [32]- [34]. However, all these methods require perfect or (at least) partial prior knowledge of the array configuration, or, equivalently 1 , of the steering vectors parametric structure, in particular w.r.t.…”

Dual Band MEMS Directional Acoustic Sensor for Near Resonance Operation

“…An alternative to microphone arrays is vector sensors. They can achieve accurate directional response relying on many different techniques and configurations and appropriate signal processing schemes [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ]. More recently, the reduced size, lightweight, and lower power requirements of MEMS-based directional acoustic sensors fostered interest in their development [ 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 ].…”