How can you easily evaluate a MEMS microphone ?

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology is used for many sensing applications including microphones. The MEMS microphone provides a design alternative to Electret Condenser Microphones (ECMs) for many consumer electronic and mobile products. With this goal in mind, Infineon Technologies  silicon microphones have been designed to extend the benefits of lowest possible self-noise (high SNR) and lowest distortion to an ever-expanding number of applications. For consumer applications, digital and analog MEMS microphones bring a studio-quality audio experience to smartphone or earbud form factors.

The high-performance MEMS microphones can replace ECM designs in:

• Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) in head- and earphones, earbuds
• Voice User Interface (VUI) such as smart speakers, home automation and IoT devices
• High quality audio capturing in cameras, laptops, tablets, conference systems

To simplify the evaluation of the capabilities of the MEMS microphone in different applications, Infineon offers five kits. For example, KIT_IM73A135V01_FLEX includes five of the company’s XENSIV™ MEMS microphones mounted on flex board and one adapter board. One microphone of each type is mounted on a separate flex board. The flex board can be easily connected to an audio testing setup with the included adapter board via a 6-position zero insertion force (ZIF) connector. A summary of the kit’s features and capabilities:

• Quick and easy connection to an evaluation system
• Small size 25 mm x 4.5 mm MEMS flex board
• Pre-soldered MEMS microphone
• Configurable select pin configuration for digital microphones

Offering similar capabilities, the other evaluation kits are:

KIT_IM69D127V11_FLEX for evaluating IM69D127V11 ultra-high performance digital Pulse Density Modulation (PDM) MEMS microphone designed for applications requiring a very high SNR (low self-noise) and low distortion (high AOP) as well as IP57 robustness to dust and water.

EVAL AHNB ANALOGV01 provides the ability to evaluate analog MEMS microphones.

The EVAL_IM69D120_FLEXKIT is an active and preferred flex board equipped with XENSIV IM69D120 MEMS Microphone with a 69 dB(A) signal-to-noise ratio.

The newest KIT_IM72D128V01_FLEX has flex boards equipped with XENSIV IM72D128V01 MEMS microphones that are IP57 dust and water resistant with PDM.