Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2007
Reid R. Gerhardt
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
John B. Wilkerson
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
ABSTRACT. A prototype fielddeployable acoustic insect flight detector was constructed from a noisecanceling microphone
coupled to an offtheshelf digital sound recorder capable of 10 h recordings. The system was placed in an urban forest setting
25 times over the course of the summer of 2004, collecting 250 h of ambient sound recordings that were downloaded to a
personal computer and used to develop detection routines. These detection routines operated on short segments of sound
(0.093 s, corresponding to 4096 samples at 44100 Hz). A variety of approaches were implemented to detect insect flight tones.
Simple approaches, involving sensing the fundamental frequency (1st harmonic) and 2nd harmonic, were capable of detecting
insects, but generated large numbers of false positives because of other ambient sounds including human voices, birds, frogs,
automobiles, aircraft, sirens, and trains. In contrast, combining information from the first four harmonics, from the
interharmonic regions, and from the sound envelope, reduced false positives greatly. Specifically, in the 250 h of recordings,
726 clear insect buzzes were detected by the final algorithm, with only 52 false positives (6.5%). Running the final algorithm
with all criteria liberalized by 20% increased the number of clear insect buzzes by 8%, to 784, but increased false positives
to 471 (28% of total detections). The potential of using this approach for detecting mosquito activity using lowcost sensors
is discussed.
Keywords. Enumeration, Harmonic, Remote sensing, Wingbeat frequency.
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Audio
recorder
Headphone
lead and
power cable
PVC shell
Fuse
Battery
33 cm
Circuit
board
Microphone
LED
Figure 1. Schematic of the field test unit (FTU) showing location of major
components (not to scale, and cylindrical foam overhang not shown).
-20
-30
-40
-50
-60
-70
-80
0
2000
3000
4000
5000
Frequency (Hz)
6000
7000
8000
10
Peak values
0
-10
Power (dB)
1000
-20
-30
-40
-50
Inter-peak values
-60
0
500
1000
Frequency (Hz)
1500
2000
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26 dB
8 dB
4 dB
2 dB
-6 dB
4 dB
8 dB
16 dB
26 dB
34 dB
12
12
10
10
8
6
4
4
2
1
0
4:00-5:00 a.m.
2:00-3:00 a.m.
1:00-2:00 a.m.
midnight-1:00 a.m.
11:00 p.m.-midnight
0
10:00-11:00 p.m.
9:00-10:00 p.m.
8:00-9:00 p.m.
1484
14
7:00-8:00 p.m.
No. of Detections
Parameter
CONCLUSIONS
A fielddeployable acoustic insect flight detector was
constructed with lowcost electronic components and used to
collect 250 h of ambient sound recordings. These recordings
were the basis of a programming effort to develop detection
routines for mosquito flight sounds. After methodically test
ing a variety of approaches, an approach involving informa
tion from the first four harmonics, from the interharmonic
regions, and from the sound envelope was decided upon. This
approach yielded 726 clear mosquito buzzes from the 250 h
of recordings, with only 52 false positives (6.5% false posi
tive rate). This algorithm should be capable of implementa
tion on lowcost digital signal processing systems and could
enable the deployment of a new generation of lowcost insect
scouting devices.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors wish to express their sincere thanks to the fol
lowing individuals: David Smith for fabricating the electron
ic systems; Craig Wagoner for fabricating the mechanical
systems; Monette Hancock for assistance with preliminary
experimentation and for assistance with the design and
construction of the field test unit; Clifton Robertson for doing
field test unit preliminary testing and for launching the C++
programming efforts; Patrick Dobbs, Preston McCary, and
Erin Byers for running field experiments and doing data
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