Development of a Laser Pistonphone System to Calibrate the Sensitivity Modulus and Phase of Microphones for Infrasonic Frequencies

A laser pistonphone system capable of measuring the sensitivity modulus and phase of microphones is proposed. For the primary vibration calibration, the sine-approximation method has been applied which is used to calculate the complex sensitivity of accelerometers. This method is based on a laser interferometer with quadrature output instead of the fringe-counting method that is used in conventional laser pistonphones. Here, the laser pistonphone system based on the sine-approximation method with the quadrature signal is proposed and the measured results are compared to those obtained by the reciprocity method. The measured sensitivity with the proposed method agrees well with the result of the reciprocity method for the infrasound range. However, in case of the phase sensitivity, the discrepancy is relatively high in comparison to the sensitivity modulus. The results show that the proposed system is capable of calibrating the complex sensitivity of microphones. The improvement of the uncertainty and extension of the frequency range can be achieved by modification of the excitation system for obtaining the required stable excitation with long stroke.