In this paper, a multi-frequency MEMS acoustic emission (AE) sensor is designed, characterized,
and tested. The sensor includes sixteen individual resonators tuned in the range of 100 kHz to 700 kHz. The
resonator frequencies are selected to form constructive interference when they are connected in parallel to
increase the signal-to-noise ratio. Each resonator is comprised of a membrane that forms the mass and four
beams that provide stiffness. The membrane size is kept the same for each resonator to have approximately
the same sensitivity per frequency. The influence of spring elements on the resonant frequency and the
sensitivity is numerically demonstrated. The sensor is manufactured using MEMSCAP PiezoMUMPs. The
characterization experiments show a slight shift in the resonant frequency of individual resonators
compared to the design values. The MEMS sensor is packaged using a custom-designed printed circuit
board to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. The sensor performance is compared with a conventional AE
sensor. The sensitivity and frequency bandwidth of the MEMS AE device is brought to a comparable level
to bulky AE sensors.
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A Battery-Less Wireless Respiratory Sensor Using Micro-Machined Thin-Film Piezoelectric Resonators
In this work, we present a battery-less wireless Micro-Electro-Mechanical (MEMS)-based respiration sensor capable of measuring the respiration profile of a human subject from up to 2 m distance from the transceiver unit for a mean excitation power of 80 µW and a measured SNR of 124.8 dB at 0.5 m measurement distance. The sensor with a footprint of ~10 cm2 is designed to be inexpensive, maximize user mobility, and cater to applications where disposability is desirable to minimize the sanitation burden. The sensing system is composed of a custom UHF RFID antenna, a low-loss piezoelectric MEMS resonator with two modes within the frequency range of interest, and a base transceiver unit. The difference in temperature and moisture content of inhaled and exhaled air modulates the resonance frequency of the MEMS resonator which in turn is used to monitor respiration. To detect changes in the resonance frequency of the MEMS devices, the sensor is excited by a pulsed sinusoidal signal received through an external antenna directly coupled to the device. The signal reflected from the device through the antenna is then analyzed via Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to extract and monitor the resonance frequency of the resonator. By tracking the resonance frequency over time, the respiration profile of a patient is tracked. A compensation method for the removal of motion-induced artifacts and drift is proposed and implemented using the difference in the resonance frequency of two resonance modes of the same resonator.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1711632
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10312194
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Micromachines
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2072-666X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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We propose an on-chip triply resonant electro-optic modulator architecture for RF-to-optical signal conversion and provide a detailed theoretical analysis of the optimal “circuit-level” device geometries and their performance limits. The designs maximize the RF-optical conversion efficiency through simultaneous resonant enhancement of the RF drive signal, a continuous-wave (CW) optical pump, and the generated optical sideband. The optical pump and sideband are resonantly enhanced in respective supermodes of a two-coupled-cavity optical resonator system, while the RF signal can be enhanced in addition by an LC circuit formed by capacitances of the optical resonator active regions and (integrated) matching inductors. We show that such designs can offer 15-50 dB improvement in conversion efficiency over conventional microring modulators. In the proposed configurations, the photon lifetime (resonance linewidth) limits the instantaneous RF bandwidth of the electro-optic response but does not limit its central RF frequency. The latter is set by the coupling strength between the two coupled cavities and is not subject to the photon lifetime constraint inherent to conventional singly resonant microring modulators. This feature enables efficient operation at high RF carrier frequencies without a reduction in efficiency commonly associated with the photon lifetime limit and accounts for 10-30 dB of the total improvement. Two optical configurations of the modulator are proposed: a “basic” configuration with equal Q-factors in both supermodes, most suitable for narrowband RF signals, and a “generalized” configuration with independently tailored supermode Q-factors that supports a wider instantaneous bandwidth. A second significant 5-20 dB gain in modulation efficiency is expected from RF drive signal enhancement by integrated LC resonant matching, leading to the total expected improvement of 15-50 dB. Previously studied triply-resonant modulators, with coupled longitudinal (across the free spectral range (FSR)) modes, have large resonant mode volume for typical RF frequencies, which limits the interaction between the optical and RF fields. In contrast, the proposed modulators support maximally tightly confined resonant modes, with strong coupling between the mode fields, which increases and maintains high device efficiency across a range of RF frequencies. The proposed modulator architecture is compact, efficient, capable of modulation at high RF carrier frequencies and can be applied to any cavity design or modulation mechanism. It is also well suited to moderate Q, including silicon, implementations, and may be enabling for future CMOS RF-electronic-photonic systems on chip.
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A single micro-electromechanical (MEMS) resonator can be shown to exhibit behaviors unexpected in a simple resonant structure. For small driving forces, the resonator displays typical simple harmonic oscillator re- sponse. As the driving force is increased, the resonator shows the slightly more complex, but well understood, Duffing response. Rather unexpected response behavior can appear when the resonator frequency is detuned by nonlinear- ity to where two oscillatory modes of the resonator begin to interact through nonlinear coupling due to an internal resonance. The paper focuses on how the resonator response changes as the internal resonance is approached in the operating parameter space and how that behavior is conveniently represented in a bifurcation diagram. This behavior is accurately captured by a generic mathematical model. We describe an analysis of the model which shows how this coupled response varies with the system and drive parameters, especially focusing on the nonlinear coupling strength between the two modes.more » « less
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This paper presents the design, implementation, and experimental evaluation of a wireless biomedical implant platform exploiting the magnetoelectric effect for wireless power and bi-directional communication. As an emerging wireless power transfer method, magnetoelectric is promising for mm-scaled bio-implants because of its superior misalignment sensitivity, high efficiency, and low tissue absorption compared to other modalities [46, 59, 60]. Utilizing the same physical mechanism for power and communication is critical for implant miniaturization, but low-power magnetoelectric uplink communication has not been achieved yet. For the first time, we design and demonstrate near-zero power magnetoelectric backscatter from the mm-sized implants by exploiting the converse magnetostriction effects. The system for demonstration consists of an 8.2-mm3 wireless implantable device and a custom portable transceiver. The implant's ASIC interfacing with the magnetoelectric transducer encodes uplink data by changing the transducer's load, resulting in resonance frequency changes for frequency-shift-keying modulation. The magnetoelectrically backscattered signal is sensed and demodulated through frequency-to-digital conversion by the external transceiver. With design optimizations in data modulation and recovery, the proposed system archives > 1-kbps data rate at the 335-kHz carrier frequency, with a communication distance greater than 2 cm and a bit error rate less than 1E-3. Further, we validate the proposed system for wireless stimulation and sensing, and conducted ex-vivo tests through a 1.5-cm porcine tissue. The proposed magnetoelectric backscatter approach provides a path towards miniaturized wireless bio-implants for advanced biomedical applications like closed-loop neuromodulation.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12040363
