A monitoring system is necessary to make the polishing process more reliable in order to ensure the high quality and performance of the final products. Generally, AE (Acoustic Emission) is known to be closely related to the material removal rate (MRR). As the surface becomes rougher, the MRR and AE increase. Therefore, the surface roughness can be indirectly estimated using the AE signal measured during the polishing. In this study, an AE sensor-based monitoring system was fabricated to detect the very small AE signal resulting from the friction between a tool and a workpiece during polishing. The performance of this monitoring system was estimated according to polishing conditions, the relation between the level of the AE RMS and the surface roughness during the polishing was investigated.