Abstract:

Local active noise control systems generate a zone of quiet at the physical error sensor using secondary sources to cancel the acoustic pressure at the sensor location. The resulting zone of quiet is generally limited in size and as such, placement of the physical error sensor at the location of desired attenuation is required, which is often inconvenient. Virtual acoustic sensors overcome this by projecting the zone of quiet away from the physical error sensor to a remote location. While virtual acoustic sensors have shown potential to improve the performance of local active noise control systems, it is, however, likely that the desired location of maximum attenuation is not spatially fixed. The work described here presents a virtual sensing method capable of tracking a desired location in a modally dense three-dimensional sound field. The developed algorithm has been experimentally verified in a three-dimensional enclosure and the experimental results demonstrate that moving virtual sensors provide improved attenuation compared to fixed virtual sensors or fixed physical sensors.