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 high output and low leakage. Our bone conduction communication system will consist of novel 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. We will design our bone conduction communication system to meet the guidelines detailed in MIL-STD-1472F and will verify the performance with laboratory and field tests. During the Phase I project, we will prove 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.