Preamplifier With Ultra Low Frequency Cutoff for Infrasonic Condenser Microphone

Author(s):  
Rasmus Trock Kinnerup ◽  
Arnold Knott ◽  
Ole Cornelius Thomsen ◽  
Kresten Marbjerg ◽  
Per Rasmussen

Measuring infrasonic sound sets high requirements on the instruments used. Typically the measurement chain consists of a microphone and a preamplifier. As the input resistance of the preamplifier forms a high pass filter with the capacitance of the microphone in the picofarad range, measuring ultra low frequencies becomes a challenge. The electric preamplifier presented in this paper together with a prepolarized condenser microphone form a measurement system. The developed preamplifier connects the microphone signal directly to the input of an operational amplifier with ultra high input impedance. The bias current for the preamplifier further complicates the signal amplification. A configuration of two diode-connected FETs provide the input bias current. The resulting input impedance of nearly 1 TΩ yields a total lower limiting −3 dB cutoff frequency of 8 mHz and a dynamic range of 95 dB. Being able to measure down to ultra low frequencies in the infrasonic frequency range will aid actors in the debate on wind turbine noise. Sonic booms from supersonic flights include frequencies down to 10 mHz and the preamplifier proposed in this paper will aid scientists trying to modify the N-shaped shock wave at high level which prohibits flights in land zones.

Geophysics ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 48 (9) ◽  
pp. 1219-1232 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. San Filipo ◽  
Gerald W. Hohmann

Computer simulation of low‐frequency electromagnetic (EM) digital data acquisition in the presence of natural field noise demonstrates several important limitations and considerations. Without a remote reference noise removal scheme, it is difficult to obtain an adequate ratio of signal to noise below 0.1 Hz for frequency‐domain processing and below 0.3 Hz base frequency for time‐domain processing for a typical source‐receiver configuration. A digital high‐pass filter substantially facilitates rejection of natural field noise above these frequencies; however, at lower frequencies where much longer stacking times are required, it becomes ineffective. Use of a remote reference to subtract natural field noise extends these low‐frequency limits by one decade, but the remote reference technique is limited by the resolution and dynamic range of the instrumentation. Gathering data in short segments so that natural field drift can be offset for each segment allows a higher gain setting to minimize dynamic range problems. The analysis is also applicable to the induced polarization technique in which similar problems arise at low frequencies in the presence of telluric noise.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (23) ◽  
pp. 2931
Author(s):  
Waldemar Jendernalik ◽  
Jacek Jakusz ◽  
Grzegorz Blakiewicz

Buffer-based CMOS filters are maximally simplified circuits containing as few transistors as possible. Their applications, among others, include nano to micro watt biomedical sensors that process physiological signals of frequencies from 0.01 Hz to about 3 kHz. The order of a buffer-based filter is not greater than two. Hence, to obtain higher-order filters, a cascade of second-order filters is constructed. In this paper, a more general method for buffer-based filter synthesis is developed and presented. The method uses RLC ladder prototypes to obtain filters of arbitrary orders. In addition, a set of novel circuit solutions with ultra-low voltage and power are proposed. The introduced circuits were synthesized and simulated using 180-nm CMOS technology of X-FAB. One of the designed circuits is a fourth-order, low-pass filter that features: 100-Hz passband, 0.4-V supply voltage, power consumption of less than 5 nW, and dynamic range above 60 dB. Moreover, the total capacitance of the proposed filter (31 pF) is 25% lower compared to the structure synthesized using a conventional cascade method (40 pF).


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (23) ◽  
pp. 5173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Pérez-Bailón ◽  
Belén Calvo ◽  
Nicolás Medrano

This paper presents a fully integrated Gm–C low pass filter (LPF) based on a current steering Gm reduction-tuning technique, specifically designed to operate as the output stage of a SoC lock-in amplifier. To validate this proposal, a first-order and a second-order single-ended topology were integrated into a 1.8 V to 0.18 µm CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) process, showing experimentally a tuneable cutoff frequency that spanned five orders of magnitude, from tens of mHz to kHz, with a constant current consumption (below 3 µA/pole), compact size (<0.0140 mm2/pole), and a dynamic range better than 70 dB. Compared to state-of-the-art solutions, the proposed approach exhibited very competitive performances while simultaneously fully satisfying the demanding requirements of on-chip portable measurement systems in terms of highly efficient area and power. This is of special relevance, taking into account the current trend towards multichannel instruments to process sensor arrays, as the total area and power consumption will be proportional to the number of channels.


1977 ◽  
Vol 55 (18) ◽  
pp. 2437-2438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry A. Tattar ◽  
David M. Sylvia

Frequency spectra of healthy plant storage tissue indicate that the tissue acts as a high-pass filter that attenuates low frequencies and allows high frequencies to pass through. During progressive deterioration of the tissue from infection of soft-rot bacteria, the frequency spectra indicated a loss in ability of the tissues to filter low frequency signals.


1974 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun-Ichi Toyoda

Frequency characteristics of various retinal neurons in the carp were studied using sinusoidally modulated light as an input. They were affected by both intensity and pattern of illumination. In the horizontal cells, in which the effect of light intensity was studied most extensively, an increase in the light intensity brought about a decrease of the gain, which was more marked at lower frequencies, resulting in a shift of cutoff frequency towards higher frequencies and in a slight low frequency attenuation. A decrease in the area illuminated had an effect similar to a decrease in the light intensity. In the receptor, the low frequency attenuation was not apparent even at high light intensities. The adaptation process in receptors was not sufficient to explain the low frequency attenuation in the horizontal cells, and a possible contribution of negative feedback from horizontal cells to receptors was suggested. In the bipolar cell, the lateral interaction played an important role. An increase in an area resulted in the suppression of the response at low frequencies where the phases of the center and the surround responses were opposed, but in the augmentation near 5 Hz where the two responses were in phase. In amacrine cells, a low frequency attenuation and a phase advance at low frequencies were very prominent, and were considered to be due mainly to a process designated here as the neural adaptation.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Geay ◽  
Ludovic Michel ◽  
Sébastien Zanker ◽  
James Robert Rigby

Abstract. This research has been conducted to develop the use of Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) in rivers, a surrogate method for bedload monitoring. PAM consists in measuring the underwater noise naturally generated by bedload particles when impacting the river bed. Monitored bedload acoustic signals depend on bedload characteristics (e.g. grain size distribution, fluxes) but are also affected by the environment in which the acoustic waves are propagated. This study focuses on the determination of propagation effects in rivers. An experimental approach has been conducted in several streams to estimate acoustic propagation laws in field conditions. It is found that acoustic waves are differently propagated according to their frequency. As reported in other studies, acoustic waves are affected by the existence of a cutoff frequency in the kHz region. This cutoff frequency is inversely proportional to the water depth: larger water depth enables a better propagation of the acoustic waves at low frequency. Above the cutoff frequency, attenuation coefficients are found to increase linearly with frequency. The power of bedload sounds is more attenuated at higher frequencies than at low frequencies which means that, above the cutoff frequency, sounds of big particles are better propagated than sounds of small particles. Finally, it is observed that attenuation coefficients are variable within 2 orders of magnitude from one river to another. Attenuation coefficients are compared to several characteristics of the river (e.g. bed slope, bed rugosity). It is found that acoustic waves are better propagated in rivers characterised by smaller bed slopes. Bed rugosity and the presence of air bubbles in the water column are suspected to constrain the attenuation of acoustic wave in rivers.


2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Αθανάσιος Πότσης

Because of its high resolution, frequency scattering properties and indifference to day/night or cloud cover, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has become into vogue in the last years. The field of SAR remote sensing has changed dramatically with the operational introduction of new high performance signal processing techniques and new operational modes, like the polarimetry in 1980’s and the interferometry in 1990’s. Additionally, technological advances in antenna design, low noise amplifiers, band-pass filters, digital receiver technology and high frequency digital sampling devises, increase the availability and the performance of airborne as well as spaceborne SAR sensors. All these technological advances result to real time SAR system operation and in most of the frequency bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. These advanced hardware components combined with the new radar techniques result to large variety of operational and research applications. In several of the new coming applications there is the need for a SAR system to penetrate vegetation and foliage. As a result of this, a new class of SAR systems, using low frequencies, has emerged. The combination of low frequency with high bandwidth allows a variety of new military as well as civilian applications. In the frame of this thesis, several hardware and software modifications made in the E-SAR P-Band system operated by DLR aiming the improvement of the collected and processed data quality is described. The basic P-Band inherent problems like the low Signal-To-Noise-Ratio (SNR), the presence of Radio Frequency Interferences (RFI) as well as the high dynamic range of the backscattered signal are addressed. A new mode of operation called “Listen Only” (LO) channel mode gave us the unique opportunity to study and analyze the special characteristics of the interfering signals and the nature of the low frequency backscattered signal. Based on this analysis new RFI suppression algorithms have been developed and the system operation parameters have been set to the correct value resulting to high quality collected data. The effect of RFI signals in fully polarimetric SAR data processing and applications are analyzed in detail. One of the principal items of this thesis is the development of a new robust sub-aperture algorithm for improved Motion Compensation (MoCo) in wide azimuth beam SAR data processing. The new algorithm is incorporated to the Extended Chirp Scaling SAR data processing algorithm. The improved MoCo algorithm results to focused images with high SNR, contrast, higher resolution and better geometric correctness. The performance and the correction accuracy of the proposed algorithms are analyzed by using mainly real data collected by the E-SAR system of DLR.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 537-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Geay ◽  
Ludovic Michel ◽  
Sébastien Zanker ◽  
James Robert Rigby

Abstract. This research has been conducted to develop the use of passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) in rivers, a surrogate method for bedload monitoring. PAM consists in measuring the underwater noise naturally generated by bedload particles when impacting the river bed. Monitored bedload acoustic signals depend on bedload characteristics (e.g., grain size distribution, fluxes) but are also affected by the environment in which the acoustic waves are propagated. This study focuses on the determination of propagation effects in rivers. An experimental approach has been conducted in several streams to estimate acoustic propagation laws in field conditions. It is found that acoustic waves are differently propagated according to their frequency. As reported in other studies, acoustic waves are affected by the existence of a cutoff frequency in the kilohertz region. This cutoff frequency is inversely proportional to the water depth: larger water depth enables a better propagation of the acoustic waves at low frequency. Above the cutoff frequency, attenuation coefficients are found to increase linearly with frequency. The power of bedload sounds is more attenuated at higher frequencies than at low frequencies, which means that, above the cutoff frequency, sounds of big particles are better propagated than sounds of small particles. Finally, it is observed that attenuation coefficients are variable within 2 orders of magnitude from one river to another. Attenuation coefficients are compared to several characteristics of the river (e.g., bed slope, surface grain size). It is found that acoustic waves are better propagated in rivers characterized by smaller bed slopes. Bed roughness and the presence of air bubbles in the water column are suspected to constrain the attenuation of acoustic wave in rivers.


Author(s):  
Shashvat Prakash ◽  
Yedidia Neumeier ◽  
Ben T. Zinn

Lean, premixed combustion has been aggressively pursued in recent years because it offers a practical approach for reducing emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from gas turbines. However, lean premixed flames pose a greater risk of blowout. Studies on swirl and dump stabilized flames have shown that as a flame approaches blowout, distinctive precursors occur, such as pockets of localized extinctions and brief flame shape transitions to a thin ‘tornado’ configuration. For this study, both precursor types are detected using separate, dedicated optical sensors. Observations indicate that the tornado mode is part of the blowout process in a 127 mm long combustor and that a localized extinction precursor immediately precedes the tornado mode transition. Despite the causality, the statistics of tornado bursts and localized extinctions suggest a ‘memoryless’ Poisson process, where the occurrence of one event type does not influence the time until the next event of the same type. Localized extinctions have been used previously for blowout margin estimation, and are well suited for the purpose because the occurrence frequency increases with diminishing margin. However, the signals commonly used to detect localized extinction events are noisy due to the nature of the flame; thus, detection is prone to false alarms. Detecting tornado bursts, by comparison, is less ambiguous but such events occur too rarely for blowout mitigation applications. The shortcomings of both precursor detection methods can be addressed by combining observations of both precursor types in a meaningful manner. The presence of tornado bursts indicates that the flame is near blowout; this fact can be used to calibrate margin estimation routines based upon localized extinction. However, this approach would require two sensors since any one optical sensor cannot directly differentiate both precursor types. A single sensor approach can be developed whereby the causal relationship between the two precursor types is exploited. Local extinctions with longer duration times can potentially perturb the flame into an alternate flow configuration. The presence of these tornado ‘triggers’ manifest as an increase in the low frequency content of the chemiluminescence signal. A low pass filter with the appropriate cutoff frequency can differentiate between the tornado-triggering and benign, inconsequential localized extinctions. Therefore, the same signal that detects localized extinctions can be filtered to capably predict tornado mode shifts. This scheme will enable robust margin detection and minimize sensitivity to noise.


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