Diffused Sensing for Sharp Directive Beamforming

We generalized our previously proposed diffused sensing for a microphone array design to achieve sharp directive beamforming to enable various filter design methods to be applied. In the conventional microphone array, various filter design methods have been studied to narrow the directivity beam width. However, it is difficult to minimize the power of interference sources in the beamforming output (output interference power) over a broad frequency range since the cross-correlation between transfer functions from sound sources to microphones increases in some frequencies. With the diffused sensing, the cross-correlation is minimized by physically varying the transfer functions. We investigated how a microphone array should be designed in order to minimize the cross-correlation between transfer functions and found that placing the array in a diffuse acoustic field produces optimum results. Because the transfer functions are known a priori, this finding makes it possible to narrow the directivity beam width over a broad frequency range. This observation can be practically achieved by placing microphones inside a reflective enclosure, part of which is open to let sound waves enter. We conducted experiments using 24 microphones and confirmed that the output interference power was reduced over a broad frequency range and the beam width was narrowed by using the diffused sensing.