  Mosquito acoustic communication is studied for its singular and poorly-known
in-flight hearing mechanism, for its efficiency in mechanical-to-acoustical
power transduction, as well as for being the deadliest disease vector. A
combined computational and experimental methods to predict and extract the
wing-tone sound from individual tethered or free-flying mosquitoes was
developed. This paper describes the experimental methods and gives some
preliminary results of the simulations. Simultaneous slow-motion images (20k
fps) and 3D-sound of Culex quinquefasciatus mosquitoes were recorded. The sound
map around the mosquitoes was recorded in one or two planes with a rotating
array of 12-microphones. Backilluminated mosquito-wings allowed to extract 11
veincrossing locations on each high-speed camera image over 3-4 wingbeat
periods to generate 3D deformations of the wing. Simultaneous 3D sound data
recorded by microphone arrays were post-processed by using the physicsbased
independent component analysis to filter out the noise and generate a 3D sound
map. The simulated wingtone sound pattern generated from the aeroacoustic
simulation agrees well with the original recording in the experiment using the
microphone array. The methods we developed will allow us to investigate the
wing-tone soundscape of individual mosquitoes during the courtship and
mate-chasing.
