Eur. Phys. J. B (2016) 89: 22
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2015-60870-1

Regular Article

Signal bi-amplification in networks of unidirectionally coupled MEMS

¹ Lab. Modelling and Simulation in Engineering, Biomimetics and Prototypes, Faculty of Science, University of Yaounde I, Box 812, Yaounde, Cameroon
² Applied Physics Research Group (APHY), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
³ IFISC, Instituto de Física Interdisciplinar y Sistemas Complejos (CSIC-UIB), Campus Universitat Illes Balears, 07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain

^a e-mail: pwoafo1@yahoo.fr

Received: 2 November 2015
Received in final form: 10 December 2015
Published online: 27 January 2016

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the propagation and the amplification of an input signal in networks of unidirectionally coupled micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Two types of external excitations are considered: sinusoidal and stochastic signals. We show that sinusoidal signals are amplified up to a saturation level which depends on the transmission rate and despite MEMS being nonlinear the sinusoidal shape is well preserved if the number of MEMS is not too large. However, increasing the number of MEMS, there is an instability that leads to chaotic behavior and which is triggered by the amplification of the harmonics generated by the nonlinearities. We also show that for stochastic input signals, the MEMS array acts as a band-pass filter and after just a few elements the signal has a narrow power spectra.