Analogies between the measurement of acoustic impedance via the reaction on the source method and the automatic microwave vector network analyzer technique

Abstract

One useful method of acoustic impedance measurement involves the measurement of the electrical impedance ‘‘looking into’’ the electrical port of a reciprocal electroacoustic transducer. This reaction on the source method greatly facilitates the measurement of acoustic impedance by borrowing highly refined techniques to measure electrical impedance. It is also well suited for in situ acoustic impedance measurements. In order to accurately determine acoustic impedance from the measured electrical impedance, the characteristics of the transducer must be accurately known, i.e., the characteristics of the transducer must be ‘‘removed’’ completely from the data. The measurement of acoustic impedance via the measurement of the reaction on the source is analogous to modern microwave measurements made with an automatic vector network analyzer. The action of the analyzer is described as de-embedding the desired data (such as acoustic impedance) from the raw data. Such measurements are fundamentally substitution measurements in that the transducer’s characteristics are determined by measuring a set of reference standards. The reaction on the source method is extended to take advantage of improvements in microwave measurement techniques which allow calibration via imperfect standard loads. This removes one of the principal weaknesses of the method in that the requirement of high-quality reference standards is relaxed.