Receive sensitivity analysis of CMUT for underwater acoustic communication

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1817198 (Table of Contents)

The underwater communication among autonomous underwater robots, working in swarm, need to be reliable and accurate. The communication and sensing transducers used on the robots must withstand the harsh underwater environment. For catering such necessities, the transducers ought to be light weight, flexible and mountable on the robot surfaces. In this work a CMUT with small size, higher sensitivity and lower power consumption is suggested as an alternative to the conventional communication devices. The CMUT is designed, analyzed and tested as an underwater acoustic communication device in receive mode. Receive sensitivity analysis is performed using finite element analysis. The fabricated device is tested in lab environment and the results showed consistency to the commercial devices.