Improving how we steer and sense sound

Detecting where sounds come from is important in industries like robotics, environmental monitoring, and underwater exploration. Traditional systems use large transducer arrays, which work well but are often bulky, complex, and expensive. Acoustic leaky-wave antennas provide a simpler alternative by guiding sound through a structure that leaks energy in controlled directions. However, current theoretical models do not accurately predict the real-world behavior of these devices. Forssén et al. developed a proof of concept that can be used to improve the design of acoustic leaky-wave antennas.

The model, which was validated using prototype antennas, showed that changing the frequency of an incoming sound wave changed the radiation angle, or area, that the antenna could scan, with greater prediction consistency than previous studies. The authors also found that using a different acoustical pattern that varied across the wave’s width rather than being uniform in that direction improved their ability to control the radiation angle and leakage rate of the device.

“The presented theory provides the necessary formulations for predicting the two main design parameters, the radiation angle and leakage rate. This is done for a basic kind of antenna called uniform or quasi-uniform, where quasi-uniform means that antenna openings are made from closely spaced perforations such that that they behave as acoustically uniform,” author Jens Forssén said.

The team used finite-element modeling to predict device behavior and validated their results on two patterns using a prototype antenna.

Future work will focus on more complex antenna designs, including ones with varying size of openings along the antenna and others that can scan a broader area than the one studied.

Source: “A quasi-uniform acoustic leaky-wave antenna: Analysis, design and experimental validation,” Jens Forssén, Pablo-Antonio Martínez-Vicente, Astrid Algaba-Brazález, Matthew Polidano, and José-Luis Gómez-Tornero, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (2026). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0046796 .