The sound source and transducer compatibility for acoustics energy harvesting

Acoustics is a sound wave that propagates from the source through a medium of air. The mechanical vibrations created by sound carries an energy in the form of pressure. Because acoustics exists in our daily life activities, it has the potential to be used as an alternative of energy source. A transducer which has capability to convert acoustics into voltage is used for the energy harvester. The active development includes sound pressure amplification and transducer devices. In the other hand, Indonesia has a large population with a variety of physical activities that produce a noise to be used as the source of sound energy. In this article, we examine the compatibility of noise sources and transducers commonly used for acoustics harvesting systems in order to achieve maximum throughput. The frequency spectrum characteristics of the sound generated by public activities will be processed using spectrogram analysis and compared to the frequency response of a MEMS microphone and a conventional electret condenser microphone. According to the result, most of the sounds being observed contain low frequency components that are still within the electret condenser microphone's flat frequency response range.