Acoustic measurement practices for UAS and UAM

Abstract

Characterization of noise emission from novel aircraft types such as UAS and UAM is important for assessment of their impact on community soundscapes. Critical planning decisions such as the required buffer area between vertiports and noise-sensitive land uses will be made based on levels of interference with human activity. Traditional methods developed for fixed wing aircraft and helicopters may not be sufficient, because the sound character of UAS/UAM can make them more or less audible than their traditionally measured noise magnitude would suggest. Techniques have been developed that enable assessment of steady and time-varying loudness, tone prominence, sound quality and other metrics by adopting consistent calibrated procedures for acoustic waveform capture along with relevant metadata. This presentation will explore field procedures and data reduction employed to facilitate reconstruction of the aircraft sound at any receiver point on the ground, and subsequent application of existing or new metrics to this data.