Remote whispering metamaterial for non-radiative transceiving of ultra-weak sound

Nat Commun. 2021 Jun 16;12(1):3670. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-23991-3.

Abstract

Transceiving ultra-weak sound typically relies on signal pre-amplification at the transmitting end via active electro-acoustic devices, which inherently perturbs the environment in the form of noise that inevitably leads to information leakage. Here we demonstrate a passive remote-whispering metamaterial (RWM) enabling weak airborne sound at audible frequencies to reach unprecedented signal enhancement without altering the detected ambient soundscape, which is based on the extraordinary scattering properties of a metamaterial formed by a pair of self-resonating subwavelength Mie meta-cavities, constituting the acoustic analogy of Förster resonance energy transfer. We demonstrate efficient non-radiative sound transfer over distances hundreds times longer than the radius of the meta-cavities, which enables the RWM to recover weak sound signals completely overwhelmed by strong noise with enhanced signal-to-noise ratio from -3 dB below the detection limit of 0 dB in free space to 17.7 dB.