A Multilayered Magnetoelectric Transmitter with Suppressed Nonlinearity for Portable VLF Communication

Zhaoqiang Chu; Zhineng Mao; Kaixin Song; Shizhan Jiang; Shugang Min; Wei Dan; Chenyuan Yu; Meiyu Wu; Yinghui Ren; Zhichao Lu; Jie Jiao; Tianxiang Nan; Shuxiang Dong

doi:10.34133/research.0208

A Multilayered Magnetoelectric Transmitter with Suppressed Nonlinearity for Portable VLF Communication

Research (Wash D C). 2023 Sep 15:6:0208. doi: 10.34133/research.0208. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Zhaoqiang Chu^{1

2}, Zhineng Mao¹, Kaixin Song¹, Shizhan Jiang¹, Shugang Min¹, Wei Dan¹, Chenyuan Yu¹, Meiyu Wu¹, Yinghui Ren¹, Zhichao Lu³, Jie Jiao⁴, Tianxiang Nan⁵, Shuxiang Dong⁶

Affiliations

¹ Qingdao Innovation and Development Base, Harbin Engineering University, Qingdao 266071, China.
² College of Underwater Acoustics Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, China.
³ Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan, Guangdong 523808 China.
⁴ Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China.
⁵ School of Integrated Circuits and Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology (BNRist), Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
⁶ College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.

Abstract

Acoustically actuated magnetoelectric (ME) antenna based on the efficient oscillation of magnetic dipoles has recently been considered as a promising solution for portable very-low-frequency communications. However, the severe nonlinear dynamic behavior in the case of strong-field excitation results in insufficient radiation capability and poor communication performance for a conventional ME antenna. In this work, we propose to suppress the nonlinearity of an ME antenna by neutralizing the spring-hardening effect in amorphous Metglas and the spring-softening effect in piezoelectric ceramics through an ME multilayered transmitter (ME-MLTx) design. With a driving voltage of 50 V_pp at the resonance frequency of 21.2 kHz, a magnetic flux density as high as 108 fT at a distance of 100 m is produced from a single ME-MLTx. In addition, ME-MLTx performs a decreased mechanical quality factor (Q _m) less than 40.65, and, thus, a broadened bandwidth of 500 Hz is generated. Finally, a communication link transmitting binary American Standard Code for Information Interchange-coded message is built, which allows for an error-free communication with a distance of 18 m and a data rate of 300 bit/s in the presence of heavy environment noise. The communication distance can be further estimated over 100 m when using a femtotesla-class-inductive magnetic field receiver. The obtained results are believed to bring ME antennas one step closer to being applicable in very-low-frequency communications.