An analysis of a feedback active noise control system using the remote microphone technique

Abstract

This paper examines strategies in virtual sensing feedback active noise control systems and compares the noise reduction performance of three strategies: using physical microphones for direct feedback control, using virtual microphones for direct feedback control, and using physical microphones for indirect virtual feedback control. For a primary sound field with incident waves in a single direction, simulation results indicate that employing a physical microphone for indirect virtual feedback control consistently yields superior noise reduction performance than that using a physical microphone for direct feedback control. However, if the causal requirement between physical and virtual microphones is not satisfied, the increase in the equivalent secondary path delay deteriorates noise reduction performance while utilizing physical microphones for indirect virtual feedback control. For a primary sound field containing waves from multiple directions, the simulation results show that the noise reduction performance is affected by both the coherence and causality between the physical and virtual microphone signals.