Differential beamforming with circular microphone arrays

Abstract

Differential beamforming cannot only achieve high directional gain but also can form frequency-invariant beampatterns. Therefore, it has the great potential to be widely used in voice communications to process broadband speech signals. The performance of a differential beamformer in terms of directivity factor (DF), white noise gain (WNG), and frequency invariance of the beampattern depends on many factors including the array geometry, the number of sensors, the inter-sensor spacing, etc. In the literature, most studies on differential beamforming have been focused on linear microphone arrays and not much efforts have been devoted to other array geometries. This paper is devoted to the study of circular microphone arrays. In comparison with linear arrays whose spatial response is a function of the steering angle, circular microphone arrays can have the same spatial response along many different directions. The focal point of this paper is on differential beamforming with uniform circular microphone arrays. The main topics addressed include: (1) major properties of circular microphone arrays, (2) how to design differential beamformers with different beampatterns, (3) how to design differential beamformers with different orders, and (4) how to achieve a good control of the white noise amplification problem, high directional gains, and frequency-independent responses.