Underwater acoustic imaging using capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer arrays

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) have recently emerged as an alternative technology to piezoelectric transducers, offering advantages such as wide bandwidth, ease of fabricating large arrays and potential for integration with electronic circuits. In this paper, we present 2D and 3D pulse-echo imaging results using ID linear and 2D rectangular CMUT arrays, respectively. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the viability of CMUTs for underwater acoustic imaging. For imaging experiments, we have fabricated ID and 2D CMUT arrays, and built an experimental setup allowing us to transmit and receive ultrasound signals from individual transducer elements. The image quality obtained shows that CMUTs are a strong alternative to conventional piezoelectric transducer arrays for the design of future generations of underwater acoustic imaging systems.