Photoacoustic Cell with Digital Differential Detection

Solutions which reduce the impact of the external acoustic noise on the photoacoustic signal rely often on the appropriate modification of the photoacoustic cell structure. The goal is to obtain a frequency response of the cell which suppresses the external noise as much as possible. Another approach is differential detection, in which two microphones are used, and assuming that the external noise signal components from both microphones are identical, their subtraction should result in canceling the external noise. The main difficulty of that solution is that both microphone signal paths should be calibrated to have virtually identical characteristics. The paper presents a differential photoacoustic cell with digital differential detection.