In-Air Rangefinding With an AlN Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasound Transducer

Author

Przybyla, Richard J. ; Shelton, Stefon E. ; Guedes, André ; Izyumin, Igor I. ; Kline, Mitchell H. ; Horsley, David A. ; Boser, Bernhard E.

Author_Institution

Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

Volume

11

Issue

11

fYear

2011

Firstpage

2690

Lastpage

2697

Abstract

An ultrasonic rangefinder has a working range of 30 to 450 mm and operates at a 375-Hz maximum sampling rate. The random noise increases with distance and equals 1.3 mm at the maximum range. The range measurement principle is based on pulse-echo time-of-flight measurement using a single transducer for transmit and receive. The transducer consists of a piezoelectric AlN membrane with 400-μm diameter, which was fabricated using a low-temperature process compatible with processed CMOS wafers. The performance of the system exceeds the performance of other micromechanical rangefinders.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; distance measurement; micromachining; piezoelectric transducers; ultrasonic transducers; wide band gap semiconductors; AlN; CMOS wafer processing; distance 1.3 mm; distance 30 mm to 450 mm; frequency 375 Hz; in-air rangefinding; low-temperature fabrication; maximum sampling rate; piezoelectric micromachined ultrasound transducer; pulse-echo time-of-flight measurement; random noise; range measurement principle; size 400 mum; Acoustic measurements; Acoustics; Atmospheric modeling; Power generation; Resonant frequency; Transducers; Ultrasonic imaging; Acoustic signal processing; distance measurement; electromechanical sensors; microelectromechanical systems; nonlinear dynamical systems; piezoelectric transducers; ultrasonic transducers;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Sensors Journal, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1530-437X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JSEN.2011.2157490

Filename

5772902