A MEMS microphone inspired by Ormia for spatial sound detection

Zhang, Yansheng and Bauer, Ralf and Whitmer, William M. and Jackson, Joseph C. and Windmill, James F.C. and Uttamchandani, Deepak (2018) A MEMS microphone inspired by Ormia for spatial sound detection. In: The 31st IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, 2018-01-21 - 2018-01-25, Belfast Waterfront. (https://doi.org/10.1109/MEMSYS.2018.8346532)

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Abstract

This work introduces a MEMS microphone with two pairs of orthogonal and joined sensor membranes, with independent acoustic directionality responses, leading to a 3D sound localization potential. This single microphone can thus be regarded as two individual bi-directional microphones. Combining this architecture with the fly Ormia ochracea’s tympana mechanism, this microphone is also the first biomimetic MEMS microphone with piezoelectric sensing, designed for 2D sound localization.