Electro-acustic influence of the measuring system on the photoacoustic signal amplitude and phase in frequency domain

Abstract

The paper discusses the most common impacts of the measuring system on the amplitude and phase of the photoacoustic signals in the frequency domain using the open-cell experimental set-up. The highest signal distortions are detected at the ends of the observed modulation frequency range from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. The attenuation of the signal is observed at lower frequencies, caused by the electronic filtering of the microphone and sound card, with characteristic frequencies of 15 Hz and 25 Hz. At higher frequencies, the dominant signal distortions are caused by the microphone acoustic filtering, having characteristic frequencies around 9 kHz and 15 kHz. It has been found that the microphone incoherent noise, the so called flicker noise, is negligibly small in comparison to the signal and does not affect the signal shape. However, a coherent noise originating from the power modulation system of the light source significantly affects the shape of the signal in the range greater than 10 kHz. The effects of the coherent noise and measuring system influence are eliminated completely using the relevant signal correction procedure targeting the photoacoustic signal generated by the sample.