Directional Equalization of Sparse Head-Related Transfer Function Sets for Spatial Upsampling

Abstract

Acquiring decent full-spherical sets of head-related transfer functions HRTFs based on a small number of measurements is highly desirable. For spatial upsampling, HRTF interpolation in the spatially continuous spherical harmonics SH domain is a common approach. However, the number of measured HRTFs limits the assessable SH order, resulting in order-limited HRTFs when transformed to the SH domain. Thus, the SH representation of sparse HRTF sets shows restricted spatial resolution and suffers from order-limitation errors. We present a method that reduces these errors by a directional equalization prior to the SH transform. This is done by a spectral division of each HRTF with a corresponding directional rigid sphere transfer function. The processing removes direction-dependent temporal and spectral components and, therefore, significantly reduces the spatial complexity of the HRTF set, allowing for an enhanced interpolation of HRTFs at reduced SH orders. Spatial upsampling is achieved by an inverse SH transform on an arbitrary dense sampling grid. A subsequent de-equalization by a spectral multiplication with the rigid sphere transfer function recovers the energy in higher spatial orders that was not inherent in the sparse HRTF set. For evaluation, HRTFs were calculated for various limited orders from sparse datasets and compared to a reference. The results show that the proposed method clearly outperforms common SH interpolation of HRTF spectra regarding the overall spectral and temporal structure as well as modeled localization performance.