Characterization of a MEMS Directional Sound Sensor

There is a wide range of potential military applications in which ambiguity in bearing occurs with respect to sound. For example, autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could employ a sensor to determine the bearing of an explosion and conduct battle damage assessment (BDA) on it. With existing sensors this is difficult to do because the explosion is too short in duration to use the Doppler effect to determine the bearing. Also, an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) acting as a quiet platform to tow a short, omni-directional hydrophone array must contend with bearing ambiguity.