Advancements in five key complementary areas are enhancing the implementation of wideband (30 kHz to greater than 1 MHz) flat-with-frequency AE approaches, rather than the previously emphasized narrow-band resonant sensor approaches to acoustic emission monitoring. Wideband techniques with their broader bandwidth and non-distorted information provide enhanced opportunities for improvement in acoustic emission source location accuracy and acoustic emission source identification (both for sources of interest and extraneous acoustic emission sources).

Due to those potential payoffs, over the last several years a number of researchers, including Dr. Hamstad, have been developing wideband/waveform based acoustic emission technology in five areas: