Scientific Article

Achieving broadband directivity control with dual corona discharge transducers

Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Laboratory of Wave Engineering LWE, Lausanne, Switzerland

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Received: 20 August 2025
Accepted: 27 November 2025

Abstract

Loudspeakers inherit their directivity from their geometry and dimensions. Enclosed loudspeakers are omnidirectional in the low frequency range, but their directivity depends on frequency for wavelengths smaller than the radiator size, precluding the directional control over the whole bandwidth. Loudspeakers pairs allow achieving simultaneously monopolar (in-phase) and dipolar (out-of-phase) sources, thus allowing directivity control. However, they are limited by their bulkiness, preventing extending controllable directivities over high frequencies. The Corona Discharge transducer (CDT) concept relies on ionizing an ultra-thin layer of air and oscillating it through an alternating electric field, generating sound without resorting to a mechanical membrane. This transducer combines a monopolar source linked to heat exchanges, and a dipolar linked to electrostatic forces, although these two sources strengths are interconnected, yielding a given unidirectional directivity. In this paper, we propose to leverage the combination of monopole and dipole at the heart of the CDT concept to achieve controllable directivities by stacking two independent CDTs. The very thin dimensions of the CDT allows achieving coincident controllable monopolar and dipolar sound sources making the control of directivity over the whole operating frequency ranges. An analytical model of the dual CDTs concept is first compared to full-wave simulations, and an experimental prototype is finally assessed in anechoic conditions. Our findings open the way to a new range of broadband directionally-controllable transducers that have application to sound generation, active noise reduction, or even non-reciprocal active acoustic metamaterials.