The first digital voice vibration sensor

     Knowles Corporation has released its first digital voice vibration sensor V2S200D. The device is a high-bandwidth, low-power professional vibration sensor that can be used in conjunction with a microphone to improve the quality of voice calls in noisy environments by receiving sound from the speaker and excluding sound from the surrounding environment. More than ever, consumers are using audio devices such as TWS earbuds to communicate by voice on the move, especially in public places. The distracting noise common in restaurants, airports and public transport poses a challenge to achieving high quality communication with traditional noise suppression techniques. High winds and traffic noise can also seriously affect the clarity of voice calls in outdoor environments.

     The device aims to solve these problems by selectively picking up the speaker's voice while suppressing all other sounds. Mixing low-band voice signals from devices with high-band voice signals using today's TWS microphones provides a consistent, reliable and frustration-free voice calling experience in these environments. In addition to improving voice call quality, the sensor allows for other use cases such as voice activity detection, impostor rejection, and personalization.

     "Using Bluetooth headsets for frictionless communication anywhere has become a fundamental consumer expectation. We are busier than ever and the new 'work anywhere' culture means we can make conference calls from cafes, trains and lounges, "said Saket Thukral, senior director of microphone product line management at Knowles. "We are excited to offer our customers easy-to-use, high-performance solutions to meet this expectation and help them delight consumers."

     "Bone conduction sensors are rapidly becoming an essential feature in TWS designs to improve speech pickup in noisy environments. To date, solutions on the market tend to offer less-than-ideal performance or are difficult to integrate due to their size, robustness, high power consumption, or some other important tradeoff. I had a chance to experiment with the new Knowles V2S200D sensor at CES 2023. "With superior performance, low power consumption and small size, this unique solution is the best choice for many applications in the market today," said Peter Cooney, founder and director of research at SAR Insight.