Psychoacoustically motivated active noise control at remote locations

Abstract

Active noise control (ANC) is an effective way to cancel the low-frequency noise. The conventional ANC system creates the ‘zone of quiet’ by minimizing the mean square error (MSE) at the location of an error microphone. However, in practical applications, sometimes it is not possible to achieve the noise attenuation at the desired location due to physical constraints limiting locating the error microphone at certain points. Similarly, the performance of the conventional ANC system also compromises when the impression of audio sensation on human auditory does not match the numerical values of the system. It is because the human ear has complicated psychoacoustic properties. In this paper, we present a new psychoacoustically motivated ANC system for a remote location. Noise weighting filters are incorporated into remote ANC to improve the audio sensation of the residual noise. The performance of the purposed system is evaluated by computer simulation, and the perceptual loudness is selected as a performance criterion for the psychoacoustic assessment of residual noise.