Shane Lani

Coherent processing of shipping noise for ocean monitoring

Ambient noise was recorded on two vertical line arrays (VLAs) separated by 450 m and deployed in shallow water (depth ~150 m) off San Diego, CA continuously for 6 days. Recordings were dominated by non-stationary and non-uniform broadband shipping noise (250 Hz to 1.5 kHz). Stable coherent noise wavefronts were extracted from ambient noise correlations between the VLAs during all 6 days by mitigating the effect of discrete shipping events and using array beamforming with data-derived steering vectors. This procedure allows the tracking of arrival-time variations of these coherent wavefronts during 6 days and may help in developing future passive acoustic tomography systems.

Enhancing the emergence rate of coherent wavefronts from ocean ambient noise correlations using spatio-temporal filters.

Extracting coherent wavefronts between passive receivers using cross-correlations of ambient noise (CAN) provides a means for monitoring the seismoacoustic environment without using active sources. However, using cross-correlations between single receivers can require a long recording time in order to extract stable coherent arrivals from CAN. This becomes an issue if the propagation medium fluctuates significantly during the recording period. To address this issue, this article presents a general spatio-temporal filtering procedure to enhance the emergence rate for coherent wavefronts extracted from time-averaged ambient noise correlations between two spatially separated arrays. The robustness of this array-based CAN technique is investigated using ambient shipping noise recorded over 24 h in the frequency band [250-850 Hz] on two vertical line arrays deployed 143 m apart in shallow water (depth 20 m). Experimental results confirm that the array-based CAN technique can significantly reduce the recording duration (e.g., from 22 h to 30 min) required for extracting coherent wavefronts of sufficient amplitude (e.g., 20 dB over residual temporal fluctations) when compared to conventional CAN implementations between single pairs of hydrophones. These improvements of the CAN technique could benefit the development of noise-based ocean monitoring applications such as passive acoustic tomography.

High frequency ultrasonic imaging using thermal mechanical noise recorded on capacitive micromachined transducer arrays

The cross-correlation of diffuse thermal-mechanical noise recorded by two sensors yields an estimate of the ultrasonic waves propagating between them. We used this approach at high frequencies (1-30 MHz) on a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) ring array (d = 725 μm), monolithically integrated with low noise complementary metal oxide semiconductor electronics. The thermal-mechanical noise cross-correlations between the CMUT array elements in immersion reveal both evanescent surface waves (below 10 MHz) and waves propagating primarily in the fluid (above 10 MHz). These propagating waves may allow passive imaging of scatterers closer to the array as compared to conventional pulse-echo systems, providing potentially higher resolution.

Monitoring deep‐ocean temperatures using acoustic ambient noise

Measuring temperature changes of the deep oceans, important for determining the oceanic heat content and its impact on the Earths climate evolution, is typically done using free-drifting profiling oceanographic floats with limited global coverage. Acoustic thermometry provides an alternative and complementary remote sensing methodology for monitoring fine temperature variations of the deep ocean over long distances between a few underwater sources and receivers. We demonstrate a simpler, totally passive (i.e., without deploying any active sources) modality for acoustic thermometry of the deep oceans (for depths of ~ 500–1500 m), using only ambient noise recorded by two existing hydroacoustic stations of the International Monitoring System. We suggest that passive acoustic thermometry could improve global monitoring of deep-ocean temperature variations through implementation using a global network of hydrophone arrays.

Modal and transient analysis of membrane acoustic metasurfaces

Dispersive surface waves on an acoustic 2D metamaterial, a metasurface consisting of membranes on a rigid surface, have certain propagation characteristics with potential applications for resonance based sensing and subwavelength imaging. The trapped modes of the system that is responsible for the dispersive properties of these acoustic waves are analyzed through modal analysis for a small linear membrane array to obtain the mode shapes, resonant frequencies, quality factors, and wavenumbers. Transient analysis is used for larger arrays to obtain the dispersive properties of the traveling waves and is compared to the modal analysis. Equifrequency contours of the 2D metasurface illustrate interesting features of the metasurface at different frequency regimes around the membrane resonance. These features include anisotropic wave propagation, directional band gap, negative refraction, and complete band gap. Effects of membrane pitch, randomness of resonance, and aperiodic membrane spacing on dispersion, band gaps, and quality factor of the trapped modes on the metasurface are investigated as they relate to realistic implementations for different applications.

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer arrays as tunable acoustic metamaterials.

Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers (CMUTs) operating in immersion support dispersive evanescent waves due to the subwavelength periodic structure of electrostatically actuated membranes in the array. Evanescent wave characteristics also depend on the membrane resonance which is modified by the externally applied bias voltage, offering a mechanism to tune the CMUT array as an acoustic metamaterial. The dispersion and tunability characteristics are examined using a computationally efficient, mutual radiation impedance based approach to model a finite-size array and realistic parameters of variation. The simulations are verified, and tunability is demonstrated by experiments on a linear CMUT array operating in 2-12 MHz range.

Investigation of slow evanescent waves at the surface of immersed micromachined membrane arrays

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) arrays are made up of microscale (10-100μm wide) membranes with embedded electrodes for electrostatic excitation and detection of acoustic waves. The main application of CMUTs has been in medical imaging where advantages of miniaturization and electronics integration are significant. In addition to generating bulk waves in the far-field imaging medium, CMUT arrays also support dispersive evanescent surface waves. These surface waves derive their dispersive properties not only from the periodic structure of the array, but also from the membrane resonance. The CMUTs can tune the surface wave by changing the applied bias voltage to the membranes, which in effect changes the membrane stiffness. This tunability allows the possibility of CMUTs to exploit these slowly propagating evanescent waves as a means for creating subwavelength resolution fields for high-resolution ultrasound imaging and sensing in the near field. The dispersive behavior of these evanescent surface waves propagating along a CMUT array is quantified using a computationally efficient, boundary element method based model capable of adding parameter variation enabling more realistic modeling. The model is validated with experimental data obtained from a 1×16 CMUT array with a membrane resonance tunable between 5 and 6.5MHz. The effect of random variation of the CMUT properties on the surface wave characteristics is investigated. Analysis was done on transient signals from simulations and experiments in addition to using a time-frequency method to track the group velocity that varied from 1500m/s to 400m/s.

Ultrasonic subwavelength focusing above two dimensional membrane metasurface using time reversal

Surface acoustic waves can propagate above immersed membrane arrays, such as of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs). Similar waves on metamaterials and metasurfaces with rigid structures (typically in the kHz range) have been studied and used for tunable band gaps, negative refraction, and subwavelength focusing and imaging. This work demonstrates through simulation and experiments that a 2D membrane array can be used for subwavelength focusing utilizing a time reversal method. The studied structure consisted of the focusing region, which is a dense grid of 7x7 membranes (6.6 MHz resonance) that support the slow surface acoustic waves. Eight additional membranes are located on the same surface outside the focusing region. Subwavelength focusing was performed by using a time reversal method in which the external eight membranes were used as excitation transducers. Modeling results were verified with experiments that were performed with the membranes being actuated electrostatically and ...

Passive ultrasonics using sub-Nyquist sampling of high-frequency thermal-mechanical noise

Monolithic integration of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer arrays with low noise complementary metal oxide semiconductor electronics minimizes interconnect parasitics thus allowing the measurement of thermal-mechanical (TM) noise. This enables passive ultrasonics based on cross-correlations of diffuse TM noise to extract coherent ultrasonic waves propagating between receivers. However, synchronous recording of high-frequency TM noise puts stringent requirements on the analog to digital converters sampling rate. To alleviate this restriction, high-frequency TM noise cross-correlations (12-25 MHz) were estimated instead using compressed measurements of TM noise which could be digitized at a sampling frequency lower than the Nyquist frequency.

Ultrasonic subwavelength focusing above periodic membrane arrays in immersion

Subwavelength focusing and imaging has been a long sought after goal and one that metamaterials can possibly achieve. In 2011, Lemoult et al. used time reversal techniques to focus sound to as small as λ/25 in air by using the evanescent wave field above a gird of soda cans acting as Helmholtz resonators [Lemoult et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 064301, (2011)]. This paper will demonstrate subwavelength focusing in immersion in the 11–0 MHz frequency range with capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) arrays. CMUTs are microscale (10–100 μm wide) membrane arrays, which support evanescent surface waves that derive their dispersive properties not only from the periodic structure of the array, but also from the membrane resonance. Furthermore, CMUTs have embedded electrodes for electrostatic excitation and detection of acoustic waves which allow implementation of time reversal techniques to focus the dispersive evanescent surface waves using only the CMUTs on the same substrate as sources and receiv...