High-Intensity Airborne CMUT Transmitter Array With Beam Steering

Abstract

A 2 × 2 high-intensity CMUT transmit array that is capable of two-dimensional beam steering is presented. The device uses an ac drive voltage at half the ultrasound frequency without any dc bias, enabling the usage of the entire gap height. The device is designed using a large signal equivalent model approach. A fabrication method that requires a single lithographic mask has been used. The fabricated devices are operated at 76 kHz to beam steer at various angles. An equivalent element pressure of 144 dB//20 µPa at the transducer surface was measured. The entire half-space can be steered without any sidelobes and the beam obtained from the array is in excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions.

Multi-View Reconstruction Fusing Ultrasonic Phased Array and Camera for Mobile Robots in Simulation Environment

“…To suppress grating lobes, non-uniform sparse array is proposed by breaking the periodicity of the element arrangement, which has been applied to beamforming in sound source localization [16], [17]. A more conservative approach is to meet the λ/2 criterion, which has been accomplished by developing tiny transducers based on PMUTS [18], CMUTS [19] or PVDF [20]. However, the tinier the transducer is, the higher cost it will take.…”

A Study on Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer Periodic Sparse Array

“…The CMUT ultrasonic array, based on MEMS technology, has attracted great attention from researchers, industry and clinical institutions. This is because the CMUT ultrasonic array is smaller and more sensitive than traditional ultrasonic components [1][2][3][4][5]. The research findings of Stanford are the most prominent when it comes to CMUT devices [6][7][8][9].…”