Typical Beamforming Research Articles

Numerical analysis of vibroacoustic beamforming gains for acoustic source detection inside a pipe conveying turbulent flow

This study concerns a monitoring technique based on vibration measurements for identifying the presence of an acoustic source in a fluid-filled pipe conveying turbulent flow. In such situation, the source-induced vibrations can be smeared with the flow-induced vibrations, which hinders the source detection. To increase the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), beamforming techniques can be applied to the vibrations measured by an array of accelerometers mounted on the pipe. However, the current problem is more complex and challenging than most typical beamforming applications due to strong fluid–structure coupling and to the presence of resonant modes and internal flow excitations. Numerical vibroacoustic methods are presented to predict the vibratory response of a pipe excited by a monopole source and/or a turbulent boundary layer (TBL). The cross-spectral matrices of the computed radial accelerations induced by the monopole source to be detected and by the TBL are used for assessing the performance of two vibroacoustic beamforming techniques. The array gains using both, the conventional and the MaxSNR beamforming approaches are estimated. Results indicate superior performance of the MaxSNR, which leads to significantly higher array gain.

Near-Field Modeling and Performance Analysis for Multi-User Extremely Large-Scale MIMO Communication

This letter studies the near-field modeling and performance analysis for multi-user extremely large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (XL-MIMO) communication. With the spherical wavefront phase modeling, and by taking into account the variations of signal amplitude and projected aperture across array elements, the performance of the three typical beamforming schemes are investigated, namely the maximal-ratio combining (MRC), zero-forcing (ZF), and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) beamforming. Compared to existing uniform plane wave (UPW) model where inter-user interference (IUI) can only be suppressed in angular domain, XL-MIMO enables a new degree-of-freedom (DoF) for IUI suppression by distance separation, even for users along the same direction. Simulation results are provided to validate the modeling and performance analysis of multi-user XL-MIMO communications.

The Application of Beamforming Technology in Ionospheric Oblique Incidence Sounding With Wuhan Multi-Channel Ionospheric Sounding System (WMISS)

Improving the quality of the oblique sounding ionogram under the low transmit power and miniaturized antenna array structure has always been a meaningful research content. Here we try to use the adaptive beamforming technology combined with Wuhan Multi-channel Ionospheric Sounding System (WMISS) to improve the situation effectively. First, an L-shaped antenna array is employed to receive the oblique sounding signal; subsequently, the precise angle of the arrival signal is estimated by the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm. Then three typical adaptive beamforming algorithms are employed to synthesize the multi-channel signals. The experimental results show that for the ionospheric signals of oblique incidence sounding (OIS), SNR can be improved to tens of dBs, and the interference can be significantly suppressed. Especially for the swept-frequency ionogram of OIS, the trace gets clearer and more continuous, which will provide great convenience for further interpretation and ionospheric parameter inversion. In addition, by comparing the application effects of the three typical beamforming algorithms, this letter provides a reference for selecting the synthesized methods of the ionospheric signals of OIS received by the miniaturized array.

MVDR Algorithm Based on Estimated Diagonal Loading for Beamforming

Beamforming algorithm is widely used in many signal processing fields. At present, the typical beamforming algorithm is MVDR (Minimum Variance Distortionless Response). However, the performance of MVDR algorithm relies on the accurate covariance matrix. The MVDR algorithm declines dramatically with the inaccurate covariance matrix. To solve the problem, studying the beamforming array signal model and beamforming MVDR algorithm, we improve MVDR algorithm based on estimated diagonal loading for beamforming. MVDR optimization model based on diagonal loading compensation is established and the interval of the diagonal loading compensation value is deduced on the basis of the matrix theory. The optimal diagonal loading value in the interval is also determined through the experimental method. The experimental results show that the algorithm compared with existing algorithms is practical and effective.

Signal-Dependent Spatial Filtering Based on Weighted-Orthogonal Beamformers in the Spherical Harmonic Domain

Spatial filtering with microphone arrays is a technique that can be utilized to obtain the signal of a target sound source from a specific direction. Typical approaches in the field of audio underperform in practical environments with multiple sound sources and diffuse sound. In this contribution, we propose a post-filtering technique to suppress the effect of interferers and diffuse sound. The proposed technique utilizes the cross-spectral estimates of the output of two beamformers to formulate a time-frequency soft masker. The beamformers' outputs are used only for parameter estimation and not for generating an audio signal. Two sets of beamformer weights, a constant and an adaptive, are applied to the microphone array signals for the parameter estimation. The weights of the constant beamformer are designed such that they provide a spatially narrow beam pattern that is time and frequency invariant, having a unity gain toward the direction of interest. The weights of the adaptive beamformer are formulated using linearly constrained optimization with the constraint of weighted orthogonality with respect to the constant beamformer weights, as well as the unity gain toward the look direction. The orthogonality constraint provides diffuse sound suppression while the unity gain distortionless response. The cross spectrum of these two beamformers provides the target energy at a given look direction for the post filter. The study focuses on compact microphone arrays with which the typical beamforming techniques feature a tradeoff between noise amplification and spatial selectivity, especially in the low frequency region. The proposed method is evaluated with instrumental measures and listening tests under different reverberation times, in dual and multitalker scenarios. The evaluation shows that the proposed method provides a better performance when compared with a previous state-of-the-art spatial filter based on cross-pattern coherence, a linearly constrained beamformer and a Wiener postfilter.

Effects of a near-field rigid sphere scatterer on the performance of linear microphone array beamformers.

Beamformers enable a microphone array to capture acoustic signals from a sound source with high signal to noise ratio in a noisy environment, and the linear microphone array is of particular importance, in practice, due to its simplicity and easy implementation. A linear microphone array sometimes is used near some scattering objects, which affect its beamforming performance. This paper develops a numerical model with a linear microphone array near a rigid sphere for both far-field plane wave and near-field sources. The effects of the scatterer on two typical beamformers, i.e., the delay-and-sum beamformer and the superdirective beamformer, are investigated by both simulations and experiments. It is found that the directivity factor of both beamformers improves due to the increased equivalent array aperture when the size of the array is no larger than that of the scatter. With the increase of the array size, the directivity factor tends to deteriorate at high frequencies because of the rising side-lobes. When the array size is significantly larger than that of the scatterer, the scattering has hardly any influence on the beamforming performance.

A MODIFIED TAGUCHI'S OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM FOR BEAMFORMING APPLICATIONS

The present paper is a study of adaptive beamforming (ABF) techniques applied to antenna arrays. The structure of these techniques is based on Taguchi's Optimization (TagO) method. The high convergence speed and the ability to reach near-optimal solutions by adjusting only one parameter make the Taguchi's method an attractive choice for real time implementations like the case of ABF. Modiflcations are proposed in order to enhance the applicability of the TagO algorithm and decrease the computational time needed by the algorithm to terminate. The TagO method is used here to construct an ABF technique that aims at steering the main lobe of a uniform linear array towards a signal of interest, under the constraint of low side lobe level (SLL) or the constraint of placing radiation pattern nulls towards respective interference signals. Properly deflned fltness functions must be minimized by the TagO algorithm to satisfy respectively the above mentioned constraints. The TagO-based ABF technique is compared with typical beamforming methods, like the Sample Matrix Inversion (SMI) and Maximum Likelihood (ML) ones, and with two evolutionary ABF techniques based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Difierential Evolution (DE), respectively. The comparison is performed regarding the convergence speed, the ability to achieve better fltness values in less time, the ability to properly steer the main lobe and flnally the null-steering ability or the SLL control depending on the constraint type. The results exhibit the superiority of the TagO-based technique.

Observer for Phased Microphone Array Signal Processing with Nonlinear Output

Acoustic arrays have become an important testing tool in noise identification for industry applications, where the typical beamforming algorithm has been adopted as a classical processing technique. In most practical cases the beamforming computations have to be conducted off-line due to the excessive computational requirements. An alternative algorithm with a real-time capability is proposed. The algorithm is similar to a classic observer while array processing is performed in the frequency domain. The performance of this observer-based algorithm is studied here through comparing with the typical beamforming method, particularly for a case of coherent noise sources. In this paper it is shown that the observer-based algorithm could resolve the coherence restriction between the background noise and the signal of interest. The proposed algorithm is also beneficial for its capability of operating over sampling blocks recursively. The convergence rate of this recursive algorithm is fast enough to satisfy the requirements for practical cases. The experimental efforts could be saved extensively as any testing defects could be revealed instantaneously and corrected on site. In addition, this innovative approach provides an alternative perspective, from which many techniques already developed in control and filtering could be extended to this new application area of array processing.

On-Off Beamforming Algorithm Based on Eigen-Space Method for a Smart Antenna in IS-2000 1X Signal Environments

This paper presents a new on-off beamforming algorithm to provide an optimal weight vector. The proposed algorithm is based on the eigen-space on-off algorithm for exploiting a diversity gain that is available in the signal environments of wide angle spread. The proposed technique utilizes the primary and secondary eigenvectors to form the optimal weight vector, which is robust to the angle spread. It is confirmed in this paper that the proposed algorithm shows excellent performance compared to some typical beamforming methods which degrade the receiving performance as the angle spread increases. It is also shown that the proposed algorithm has a reasonable computational complexity of O(14N) and fast convergent speed, where N is the number of antenna elements.