Remote whispering metamaterial for non-radiative transceiving of ultra-weak sound Articles uri icon

authors

  • Zhang, Jin
  • Rui, Wei
  • Ma, Chengrong
  • Cheng, Ying
  • Liu, Xiaojun
  • CHRISTENSEN, JOHAN

publication date

  • June 2021

start page

  • 1

end page

  • 8

issue

  • 1

volume

  • 12

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 2041-1723

abstract

  • Transceiving ultra-weak sound typically relies on signal pre-amplification at the transmitting
    end via active electro-acoustic devices, which inherently perturbs the environment in the
    form of noise that inevitably leads to information leakage. Here we demonstrate a passive
    remote-whispering metamaterial (RWM) enabling weak airborne sound at audible frequencies
    to reach unprecedented signal enhancement without altering the detected ambient
    soundscape, which is based on the extraordinary scattering properties of a metamaterial
    formed by a pair of self-resonating subwavelength Mie meta-cavities, constituting the
    acoustic analogy of Förster resonance energy transfer. We demonstrate efficient nonradiative
    sound transfer over distances hundreds times longer than the radius of the metacavities,
    which enables the RWM to recover weak sound signals completely overwhelmed by
    strong noise with enhanced signal-to-noise ratio from −3 dB below the detection limit of 0 dB
    in free space to 17.7 dB.

subjects

  • Physics