IC2 is excited to announce a recent contract award titled “Flat-Package MEMS Fuselage Microphones for External Airplane Fluctuating Pressure Field Measurements.” This NASA Phase 1 SBIR aims to “develop an ultra-low-profile, ultra-smooth sensing surface, instrumentation-grade microphone for in-flight aeroacoustics measurements.” The technological advances made possible by eventual commercialization of this project will enable economically viable in-flight testing with a lower profile and higher performance than current market offerings.

In addition to the ultra-low profile (≤1.0 mm thick) flat-pack housing, these microphones will utilize digital outputs and minimize the need for lightning arresters for each microphone channel. The digital data output capability of the microphones may be serialized and converted to an optical signal for transmission through the airplane fuselage, thus eliminating the need to drive analog signals over long cables, the need to penetrate the fuselage with every signal cable, and the need for a lightning arrester for every channel to mitigate the potential impacts of a lightning strike while in flight.

This work is aimed at fulfilling the aerospace industry’s need for economically viable sensing technology that meets required metrics for flight testing for a broad class of fluctuating pressure measurement use cases including noise source location, noise shielding effects, noise source interaction effects (such as engine/airframe interactions), boundary layer measurement / characterization, and high-gradient flow investigations; essentially, any on-body fluctuating pressure field problem of interest whether it includes propagating acoustics, hydrodynamic pressure fluctuations, or a combination of both.