Patent ID: 8213634

Claim:
A sensor array comprising: (a) a plurality of sensors for receiving acoustic and/or vibrational waves and generating a signal representing information in the waves, (b) electronic circuitry which performs the function of low impedance resistive summation, and (c) a tile having a structure for holding and protecting said sensors, whereby said tile protects said sensors, provides an enlarged means for mounting or directing said sensor array, and provides useful filtering functions on said received waves; wherein the tile is comprised of: (a) one or more layers of damping material of predetermined thickness of the same or different densities performing one or more of the functions selected from the group of attenuating vibrations, providing isolation of said sensors from each other, and/or attenuating waves arriving from directions that said sensor array is not steered towards that are received by said sensors, (b) one or more layers of said sensors, (c) a connection and summation bus performing one or more of the functions selected from the group of coupling said sensor array to other electrical devices such as amplifiers and transmitters or coupling said tile to other tiles to form a larger array by electrically summing said information signals, (d) one or more layers of substrate each performing one or more functions selected from the group of mounting said sensors, providing rigidity, providing the shape, providing the interconnecting pads, and/or supporting the weight of the tile, whereby said layers of said tile are sandwiched and held together; and wherein said tile is adapted to detachably connect multiple tiles together to form a larger sensor array; and wherein beamforming is performed on said larger array of multiple tiles.