A lecture series focusing on semiconductor and sensor technology in Europe, with coffee and chocolate chip cookies included.
The series is a breakfast seminar where we look into the opportunities within semiconductor and sensor technology in Europe.
This time, it is Anna Stray Rongve from sensiBel that will give the talk "sensiBel – breaking the sound barrier with studio-quality optical MEMS microphones"
While capacitive MEMS microphones revolutionized consumer electronics in the early 2000s, that technology has hit a performance limit that only a change in architecture can overcome.
Standard capacitive designs rely on a backplate with thousands of small holes, which creates noise from air movement known as "squeeze film damping. “This restricts today's best digital microphones to a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 73 dB, leaving audio performance lagging far behind the high-fidelity 8K video quality found in modern smartphones.
This presentation introduces sensiBel’s SBM100B, the first optical MEMS microphone to break the barriers inherent in the capacitive MEMS architecture. sensiBel achieves this advancement by replacing traditional capacitive sensing with laser-optical interferometry. Developed from over 20 years of research at SINTEF, the SBM100B’s architecture utilizes a laser-optical subsystem consisting of a VCSEL, a photodetector, and a Diffractive Optical Element (DOE). By eliminating the backplate, sensiBel achieves a breakthrough performance of 80 dB SNR (14 dBA noise floor), a 146 dB Acoustic Overload Point (AOP), and a 132 dB dynamic range. This electroacoustic combination enables true studio-quality audio in a miniature, surface-mount package suitable for everything from smartphones to professional conferencing systems
As a small but growing company of 30 employees, sensiBel values the collaboration that we’ve enjoyed with graduate students. These students work at a deep technical level, ranging from component-level MEMS screening to product-level microphone testing. By handling essential repetitive tasks and testing around the clock, they relieve our engineering team, allowing senior staff to focus on core development.
Beyond technical R&D, graduate students have provided commercial value through A/B testing against competitors, even validating our technology’s competitive advantages in AI and speech recognition. We find that these "hungry" and interested students bring fresh methods from the university into our workflows. Some start as summer interns or part-time employees and eventually transition into permanent full-time roles, allowing us to shape talent specifically to our needs.