Effective Coverage Area Enhancement of Ultrasound Pest Control Devices through Ultrasound Booster Design

Abstract

One of the drawbacks of ultrasound pest control devices is in terms of their reach, as ultrasound is easily attenuated by intervening media. Ultrasound booster was conceived as a way out of this quagmire. In this work, an ultrasound booster was designed to increase the effective area of coverage of an existing stand-alone ultrasound pest control device designed to deter weaver bird away from farms. It is a five segment device, each consisting of a preamplifier, power amplifier and an ultrasonic transducer section. It receives raw ultrasound signal generated by the stand-alone device as input, process it and transmit it via its entire segment, resulting in a 360o horizontal spread and a bottom boost. Analysis of the designed and constructed booster system reveals that it enhanced the effective coverage area of the stand-alone device by a factor of five and nine when in isolated and contact placement methods respectively