Two-Way Bone Conduction Communication System for High Noise Environments

Bone conduction communication has the potential to offer many advantages for communication between Army personnel carrying out their missions. This will be especially important for the Future Force Warrior (FFW) where stealth operations, hearing protection, or environmental noise will make communication with acoustic conduction either impossible or not advisable. The goal of this project is to develop a two-way bone conduction communication system with enhanced comfort, high output and sensitivity, and low leakage. Our bone conduction communication system will consist of micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) transducers custom designed and packaged for use in transmission and reception of bone-conducted sounds. Our bone conduction system promises to overcome the limitations of existing technology by providing high levels of directional transmittal of sound and highly sensitive directional reception of sound. Our bone conduction communication system is designed to meet the guidelines detailed in MIL-STD-1472F and we will verify the performance with laboratory and field tests. During the Phase I project, we conclusively demonstrated the feasibility of our innovation by building a scaled model of our design and comparing the performance of our design to existing technologies. During Phase II, we will design, implement, evaluate, and deliver fully functional prototypes to the Army.