2012 IEEE 16th International Symposium

2012 ISCE 1569568827

Generation of Audible Sound with Ultrasonic Signals Through the Human Body
S. E. Kim, J. H. Hwang, T. W. Kang, S. W. Kang, and S. W. Sohn SoC Application Research Team Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) Daejeon, Republic of Korea sekim@etri.re.kr

ABSTRACT
This paper presents an innovative hearing system. The hearing system generates audible sound in the ears without any receivers, and no one can hear the generated sound except the user. The theory for generating audible sound is based on a self-demodulation effect which arises from the nonlinearity of the transmission medium. The nonlinear acoustics of the human body allow ultrasonic waves to interact in the transmission medium. When two ultrasonic waves with different frequencies are transmitted through the human body, an audio signal at the difference frequency of two waves is produced in the ears due to the selfdemodulation effect.

Fig. 1 . The concept of the hearing system using the self-demodulation

II. THE METHODOLOGY

In the human body, modulated ultrasound can lead to an audible signal, as any nonlinear medium through which the modulated ultrasound passes acts as a demodulator. Fig. 1 describes the concept of this type of sound transmission system. Two ultrasonic waves with different frequencies are transmitted through the human body, and audible sound is thus generated in the ear of the user. To determine if sound generation is possible in the human body, first the characteristics of the nonlinear medium have to be checked as to whether or not they are suitable as a transmission medium. If an ultrasonic transducer projects modulated ultrasound and the human body extracts the demodulated audible sound, the amplitude of the generated sound can be derived by equations. The equations of nonlinear acoustics, as discussed in earlier studies [6] [7] [8] [9] do not have general analytical solutions. However, Berktays analysis [2] represents a reasonable approximation, stating that a collimated primary wave of pressure p1 (t) P1E(t)sin(Zc t) , where P1 is the amplitude of the primary beam pressure, E(t) is the modulation envelope, and Zc is the carrier frequency, will demodulate, creating a

I. INTRODUCTION
The parametric array [1] [2] has been studied widely in audio-related contexts. The type of array exploits the effect of self-demodulation, which occurs when the nonlinearities of a compressible medium cause ultrasonic wave components to interact [3]. This ultrasonic wave interaction produces new frequencies upon the combination of the sums and differences of the individual frequency components. As a result of selfdemodulation, audible sound is created from inaudible ultrasonic waves. The first published experiment demonstrating a parametric array [4] proved that the creation of audible sound was possible in air, but that study was not intended to reproduce complex audio signals. Much later, a device [5] which employed piezoceramic transducers produced nearly fullbandwidth audio sound in air. The self-demodulation process can occur through various media, such as air, water or the human body. In this paper, we analyze the basic theory of the self-demodulation process to generate audible sound from inaudible ultrasound in the human body and describe a modulation scheme with which to produce audible sound without distortion through the human body.

secondary wave p 2 given as

p 2 (t) Here,
This work was supported by the Global Frontier R&D Program as part of the Human-centered Interaction for Coexistence project through a grant from the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Korean Government (MEST) (NRF-M1AXA003-2010-0029793).

P12 A w 2 2 E (t) 4 16 U 0 c 0 z wt 2
(  1)/2 is the coefficient of nonlinearity,

(1)

denotes the ratio of the specific heat, U 0 is the ambient density of the medium, c 0 is the small-signal wave propagation speed,

978-1-4673-1356-8/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE

TABLE I.
Medium
Blood Brain Fat Liver Muscle Water

NONLINEARITY AND ABSORPTION IN THE HUMAN BODY

Nonlinearity coefficient
4.05 4.3 6 4.4 4.7 3.6

Absorption coefficient
0.008dB/cm 0.024dB/cm 0.0192dB/cm 0.02dB/cm 0.0436dB/cm 0.00009dB/cm

y DSB ( t )

ySSB ( t )

cos(Zc t )
Fig. 2 . Generation of a SSB AM modulated signal

A is the beams cross-sectional area, z is the axial distance, D is the absorption coefficient of the medium (at a frequency t - z/c 0 is the lag time. [3] of Z c ), and The sound generated during the self-demodulation process is proportional to the nonlinearity coefficient of the transmission medium and is inversely proportional to the ambient density, wave propagation speed, and absorption coefficient. The average density of the human body is 1000kg/m3 and small-signal wave propagation speed in the human body is about 1500m/s except the bone. Table 1 provides nonlinearity coefficient and absorption coefficient of the human body. The nonlinearity of a medium can be described in terms of its nonlinearity parameter B/A which are the coefficients of the first- and second- order terms of the Taylor series expansion. A modified nonlinear coefficient used in a liquid is listed in table 1. The absorption coefficient is the attenuation rate at the transmission distance (cm) when ultrasound propagates at 40KHz. The human body is composed of various components such as blood, muscle, fat. So it is hard to describe the human body exactly. However the values in table 1 show that the human body is a nonlinear medium and ultrasonic wave can propagate through the body.

Fig. 3 . Structure of a SSB AM modulation board

Fig. 4 . A SSB AM modulation board

III. MODULATION METHODS

In earlier devices, a double-side-band (DSB) amplitude modulation (AM) scheme was used to drive the ultrasonic transducer. The envelope function of DSB is given as E(t) 1  mg(t) , (2) where m is the modulation index and g(t) is the audio signal. Upon demodulation, the result is the second derivative of the sum of two waves, one proportional to the original signal, 2mg(t), and the other proportional to its square, m 2 g 2 (t) [6].
This term distorts audible artifacts significantly. The distortion rate is one of the most important characteristics of the self-demodulated wave. To reduce distortion, m, the value of the modulation index, must be controlled. However, lowering the value of m is undesirable. A lower value of m lowers the amplitude of the intended audible sound. An alternative method for eliminating distortion is the single-side-band (SSB) amplitude modulation (AM) scheme. In the SSB scheme, it is assumed that the incoming audio signals will be frequency up-shifted by the carrier value.

For example, a 5KHz audio tone will be up-shifted by 40KHz, resulting in an upper-side-band frequency of 45KHz. For the single-audio-tone case, the resulting spectrum will simply be two sine waves at frequencies of 40KHz and 45KHz. When SSB AM signals are transmitted to the medium of the human body, self-demodulation generates an audio signal of 5KHz with zero distortion because no other frequencies are present. In other words, for a single-tone case, SSB gives a distortion-free signal with no pre-processing. Additionally, SSB AM can avoid bandwidth doubling. For DSB AM, the spectrum has twice the bandwidth of the original baseband signal, the upper side and the lower side. However, SSB AM has half the bandwidth requirement. Half the bandwidth can minimize the distortion caused by the ultrasonic transducer. Therefore, with no preprocessing, SSB modulation is superior to DSB modulation. To generate a SSB AM modulated signal, an audio signal is modulated with DSB AM scheme and the SSB band-pass filter (SSB BPF) shown in Fig. 2 then removes the lower side band of the modulated double side band. The structure of a SSB AM modulation board is presented in Fig. 3. The MP3 player stores music files and transmits an audio signal to the SSB AM modulation

Fig. 5 . The characteristics of ultrasonic transducers

Fig. 6 . Ultrasound transmission through the human body

shown in Fig. 6. While ultrasound propagates through the human body, the ultrasound generates audible sound in the human body and the microphone detects all of the signals. The frequency response of the signals transmitted through the human body was measured, as shown in Fig. 7. Two ultrasonic transducers separately transmit the 40KHz carrier signal and the 46KHz~50KHz SSB AM modulated signal to the human body. Audible sound in the range 6KHz to 10KHz is generated from two ultrasonic waves through the human body. To avoid noise at 1KHz ~ 5KHz, the SSB AM modulated signal uses a frequency of 46KHz ~ 50KHz. The SPL of the transmitted ultrasound is 85dB at 40KHz and 60dB to75dB (70dB on average) at 46KHz ~ 50KHz. The SPL of the generated audible sound ranges from 20dB to 32dB (28dB on average). To estimate the exact value of the SPL, the measurement error of 30dB has to be compensated. This measurement error arises because the microphone measures not the vibration of the human skin but the vibration in the air generated by the vibration of the human skin. The impedance mismatching between the skin and the air causes the measurement error. The measurement data shows that a nearly 110-dB ultrasound wave modulated by a 40Hz carrier signal produces nearly 58dB of audible sound at the distance of 5cm human arm in the self-demodulation process. The whisper sound in the library is about 30dB and normal conversation is about 60dB. The SPL of the 58dB is loud enough to transmit a sound.

V. CONCLUSIONS
The human body is a nonlinear medium and ultrasonic wave can propagate through the body. This study demonstrates that the human body is an excellent transmission medium for ultrasonic waves and by using its characteristics, it is possible to generate audible sound in the ears without a receiver set.

Fig. 7 . Generation of 6KHz ~ 10Khz audible sound from two ultrasonic waves through the human body.

board. The SSB AM modulation board is composed of analogto-digital converter, DSP, digital-to-analog converter. The transmitted audio signal is modulated to a SSB AM signal by the DSP in the SSB AM modulation board.

REFERENCES
[1] [2] P. J. Westervelt, Parametric Acoustic Array, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., vol. 35, pp. 535-537 (1963 Apr.) H. O. Berktay, Possible Exploitation of Nonlinear Acoustics in Underwater Transmitting Applications, J. Soud Vibr., vol. 2, pp. 435461 (1965). F. J. Pompei, The use of airborne ultrasonics for generating audible sound beams, J. Audio Eng. Soc., vol. 47, no. 9, pp. 726-731 1999. M. B. Bennett and D. T. Blackstock, Parametric Array in Air, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., vol. 57, pp.562-568 (1975) M. Yoneyama, J.-I. Fujimoto, Y. Kawamo, and S. Sasabe, The audio spotlight: An application of nonlinear interaction of sound waves to a new type of loudspeaker design, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., vol. 73, no. 5, pp.1532-1536, 1983 P. J. Westervelt, Parametric Acoustic Array, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., vol. 35, pp. 535-537 (1963 Apr.). M.F. Hamilton and D. T. Blackstock, Eds., Nonlinear Acoustics (Academic Press, Boston, MA, 1998). J. N. Tjtta and S. Tjtta, Nonlinear Equations of Acoustics, with Application to Parametric Acoustic Arrays, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., vol. 69, pp. 1644-1652 (1981 June). N. S. Bakhvalov et al., Nonlinear Theory of Sound Beams (American Institute of Physics, New York, 1987).

IV. MEASUREMENT RESULTS

An experiment was conducted to measure the frequency response of generated audible sound using a proto-type ultrasonic transducer (a piezoelectric ceramic sensor). The characteristics of ultrasonic transducer are shown in Fig. 5. At 40KHz, the transducer generates the highest sound pressure level (SPL) because the resonant frequency of the transducer is 40KHz. The SPL of ultrasound decreases as a frequency goes apart from 40KHz. At the distance of 5cm in air, the SPL of the transmitted ultrasound is 120dB at 40KHz. Two transducers were mounted on the surface of a human arm and a linear microphone (1/4" microphone) was positioned at a distance of 5cm, aligned with the center of the transducers as

[3] [4] [5]

[6] [7] [8]

[9]