Investigating a compact phantom and setup for testing body sound transducers

Contact transducers are a key element in experiments involving body sounds. The characteristics of these devices are often not known with accuracy. There are no standardized calibration setups or procedures for testing these sensors. This study investigated the characteristics of a new computer-controlled sound source phantom for testing sensors. Results suggested that sensors with different sizes require special phantom requirements. The effectiveness of certain approaches on increasing the spatial and spectral uniformity of the phantom surface signal was studied. Non-uniformities >20 dB were removable, which can be particularly helpful in comparing the characteristics of different size sensors more accurately.