Simple and robust speckle detection method for fire and heat detection in harsh environments.

Standard laser-based fire detection systems are often based on measuring the variation of optical signal amplitude. However, mechanical noise interference and loss from dust and steam can obscure the detection signal, resulting in faulty results or the inability to detect a potential fire. The presented fire detection technology will allow the detection of fire in harsh and dusty areas, which are prone to fires, where current systems show limited performance or are unable to operate. It is not the amount of light or its wavelength that is used for detecting fire, but how the refractive index randomly fluctuates due to heat convection from the fire. In practical terms, this means that light obstruction from ambient dust particles will not be a problem as long as a small fraction of the light is detected and that fires without visible flames can still be detected. The standalone laser system consists of a Linux-based Red Pitaya system, a cheap 650 nm laser diode, and a positive-intrinsic-negative photo-detector. Laser light propagates through the monitored area and reflects off a retroreflector generating a speckle pattern. Every 3 s, time traces and frequency noise spectra are measured, and eight descriptors are deduced to identify a potential fire. Both laboratory and factory acceptance tests have been performed with success.

Free-field reciprocity calibration of measurement microphones at frequencies up to 150 kHz.

Microphones are typically calibrated in a free field at frequencies up to 40 kHz using primary and secondary methods. This upper frequency is sufficiently high as to cover most sound measurement applications related with airborne noise assessment. However, other applications such as measurement of noise emitted by ultrasound cleaning machines, failure detection in aeronautic structures, and the investigation of the perception mechanisms of ultrasound may require that the sensitivity of the microphone is known at frequencies up to 150 kHz. In any of these applications, it is critical to establish a well-defined traceability chain to SI units to support any measurement result. In order to extend the frequency range of absolute free-field calibration, typical reciprocity measurement systems and measurement methods must undergo a series of changes and adaptations which may include using other types of microphones rather than laboratory standard microphones, changing the type of measurement signal, improving the methods for eliminating unwanted reflections from walls, cross-talk, distortion, etc. Herein, a strategy for the changes and adaptations to the existing measurement methodologies, and the determination of the microphone parameters is outlined, the results of its implementation are discussed, and calibrations results are presented and discussed.

The calibration of a prototype occluded ear simulator designed for neonatal hearing assessment applications.

An innovative family of ear simulators has been conceived for the calibration and traceability of audiometric equipment. Each device within the family has been designed for a particular key age group, covering neonates through to adults. The age-specific ear simulators are intended to improve the quality of hearing assessment measurements for all test subject age groups, and will be proposed as the next generation of standardised ear simulators for audiometric applications. The family of ear simulators shares a common design and modeling approach, and the first prototype devices for neonatal applications have been manufactured. The objectives of this study were to develop calibration methods, verify conformance to the design goals, demonstrate that the device is capable of being calibrated reliably, and show that its performance is ultimately suitable for international standardisation and eventual adoption into clinical practices. Four national measurement institutes took part in a round-robin calibration comparison and an analysis of the results showed that these objectives were achieved.

An acousto-optic beamformer.

There is a great variety of beamforming techniques that can be used for localization of sound sources. The differences among them usually lie in the array layout or in the specific signal processing algorithm used to compute the beamforming output. Any beamforming system consists of a finite number of transducers, which makes beamforming methods vulnerable to spatial aliasing above a certain frequency. The present work uses the acousto-optic effect, i.e., the interaction between sound and light, to localize sound sources in a plane. The use of a beam of light as the sensing element is equivalent to a continuous line aperture with an infinite number of microphones. This makes the proposed acousto-optic beamformer immune to spatial aliasing. This unique feature is illustrated by means of simulations and experimental results within the entire audible frequency range. For ease of comparison, the study is supplemented with measurements carried out with a line array of microphones.

Sound field reconstruction using acousto-optic tomography.

When sound propagates through a medium, it results in pressure fluctuations that change the instantaneous density of the medium. Under such circumstances, the refractive index that characterizes the propagation of light is not constant, but influenced by the acoustic field. This kind of interaction is known as the acousto-optic effect. The formulation of this physical phenomenon into a mathematical problem can be described in terms of the Radon transform, which makes it possible to reconstruct an arbitrary sound field using tomography. The present work derives the fundamental equations governing the acousto-optic effect in air, and demonstrates that it can be measured with a laser Doppler vibrometer in the audible frequency range. The tomographic reconstruction is tested by means of computer simulations and measurements. The main features observed in the simulations are also recognized in the experimental results. The effectiveness of the tomographic reconstruction is further confirmed with representations of the very same sound field measured with a traditional microphone array.

Radiation impedance of condenser microphones and their diffuse-field responses.

The relation between the diffuse-field response and the radiation impedance of a microphone has been investigated. Such a relation can be derived from classical theory. The practical measurement of the radiation impedance requires (a) measuring the volume velocity of the membrane of the microphone and (b) measuring the pressure on the membrane of the microphone. The first measurement is carried out by means of laser vibrometry. The second measurement cannot be implemented in practice. However, the pressure on the membrane can be calculated numerically by means of the boundary element method. In this way, a hybrid estimate of the radiation impedance is obtained. The resulting estimate of the diffuse-field response is compared with experimental estimates of the diffuse-field response determined using reciprocity and the random-incidence method. The different estimates are in good agreement at frequencies below the resonance frequency of the microphone. Although the method may not be of great practical utility, it provides a useful validation of the estimates obtained by other means.

Hybrid method for determining the parameters of condenser microphones from measured membrane velocities and numerical calculations.

Typically, numerical calculations of the pressure, free-field, and random-incidence response of a condenser microphone are carried out on the basis of an assumed displacement distribution of the diaphragm of the microphone; the conventional assumption is that the displacement follows a Bessel function. This assumption is probably valid at frequencies below the resonance frequency. However, at higher frequencies the movement of the membrane is heavily coupled with the damping of the air film between membrane and backplate and with resonances in the back chamber of the microphone. A solution to this problem is to measure the velocity distribution of the membrane by means of a non-contact method, such as laser vibrometry. The measured velocity distribution can be used together with a numerical formulation such as the boundary element method for estimating the microphone response and other parameters, e.g., the acoustic center. In this work, such a hybrid method is presented and examined. The velocity distributions of a number of condenser microphones have been determined using a laser vibrometer, and these measured velocity distributions have been used for estimating microphone responses and other parameters. The agreement with experimental data is generally good. The method can be used as an alternative for validating the parameters of the microphones determined by classical calibration techniques.

A note on determination of the diffuse-field sensitivity of microphones using the reciprocity technique.

The diffuse-field response of a microphone is usually obtained by adding a random-incidence correction to the pressure response of the microphone. However, the random-incidence correction is determined from a relative measurement, and its accuracy depends not only on the relative response at all angles of incidence but also on the accuracy of the frequency response at normal incidence. By contrast, this paper is concerned with determining the absolute diffuse-field response of a microphone using the reciprocity technique. To examine this possibility, a reciprocity calibration setup is used for measuring the electrical transfer impedance between a pair of microphones placed in a miniature (2 m(3)) reverberation room. The transfer function between the microphones is measured using fast Fourier transform analysis and pseudorandom noise. The calculation of the diffuse-field sensitivity involves (a) separation of the reverberant response from the total response, (b) determination of the reverberation time, and (c) averaging over space and frequency. The resulting diffuse-field correction is compared with an estimate of the random-incidence correction determined in an anechoic room and with a numerical prediction.

On experimental determination of the random-incidence response of microphones.

The random-incidence sensitivity of a microphone is defined as the ratio of the output voltage to the sound pressure that would exist at the position of the acoustic center of the microphone in the absence of the microphone in a sound field with incident plane waves coming from all directions. The random-incidence correction of a number of laboratory standard microphones has been determined experimentally. Although the measurement procedure seems to be straightforward, some practical and fundamental problems arise: (i) Reflections from the mounting rig contaminate the measured frequency response, and whereas some of these reflections can be removed using a time-selective technique, others coincide with the direct impulse response and consequently cannot be removed in the time domain and thus affect the accuracy of the estimate; (ii) the accuracy of the estimate is relying on the rotational symmetry of the microphone and depends on the angular resolution. The effect of the angular resolution has been compared with the analytical solution of the scattering and diffraction around a solid sphere. Numerical calculations supplement the experimental results. Although the procedure has only been applied to laboratory standard microphones, it is not restricted to such microphones and may be applied to other types of measurement microphones.

A time-selective technique for free-field reciprocity calibration of condenser microphones.

In normal practice, microphones are calibrated in a closed coupler where the sound pressure is uniformly distributed over the diaphragm. Alternatively, microphones can be placed in a free field, although in that case the distribution of sound pressure over the diaphragm will change as a result of the diffraction of the body of the microphone, and thus, its sensitivity will change. In the two cases, a technique based on the reciprocity theorem can be applied for obtaining the absolute sensitivity either under uniform pressure or free-field conditions. In this paper, signal-processing techniques are considered that improve the accuracy of the free-field calibration method. In particular, a fast Fourier transform (FFT)-based time-selective technique for removing undesired reflections from the walls of the measurement chamber has been developed and applied to the electric transfer impedance function between two microphones. The acoustic centers of the microphones have been determined from the "cleaned" transfer impedance values. Then, the complex free-field sensitivities of the microphones have been calculated. The resulting complex sensitivities and acoustic centers have proved to be in good agreement with previously published data, and this confirms the reliability of the time-selective technique, even in nonanechoic environments. Furthermore, the obtained results give a new reference for further comparisons, because they cover a frequency range with an accuracy that has not been obtained by previously published data.