A prototype FPGA implementation of a real-time delay-and-sum beamformer

Abstract

Summary form only given. This article describes a prototype FPGA implementation, of a delay-and-sum beamformer in the audio frequency range. This prototype is essentially a real-time acoustic camera, which is used to estimate a sound field intensity. Data acquisition is performed by means of a 4-microphone square array and the delay- and-sum beamforming algorithm is implemented on a Xilinx Spartan 3AN FPGA. The computed acoustic intensity images are visualized in a TFT display of a resolution of 320×240 pixels, at 26 frames-per-second.