Three dimensional sound source localization and sound mapping using a p-u sensor array.

Abstract

An acoustic sensor array, which consists of pressure and particle velocity sensors, is an attractive alternative to phased pressure array because knowledge of the three dimensional (3-D) particle velocity directly characterizes the direction of the source. Hence, it is possible to localize sources in the low-frequency range, where the phase difference between pressure sensors is small, and in the high-frequency range, where aliasing occurs with pressure sensors. This article applies advanced source localization techniques from aeroacoustics to acoustic vector sensors. Several methods are simulated and tested with several configurations and validated using measurement data from an anechoic chamber. The setup to test the algorithms consists of 24 sources that are distributed in 3-D around the set ups in the anechoic chamber. The sources are uncorrelated driven with white noise. Conventional beamforming methods have been compared with acoustic vector based deconvolution methods and MUSIC algorithms. Four configurations are tested: (1) a planar array of sound pressure microphones, (2) a planar array of pu probes (pu probes are collocated sound pressure and particle velocity probes); the velocity probes where the velocity probes are oriented in randomly, (3) a velocity gradient array, (4) a quad array of three dimensional velocity probes plus collocated sound pressure. The different methods and algorithms