On the use of global optimization methods for acoustic source mapping.

Conventional beamforming with a microphone array is a well-established method for localizing and quantifying sound sources. It provides estimates for the source strengths on a predefined grid by determining the agreement between the pressures measured and those modeled for a source located at the grid point under consideration. As such, conventional beamforming can be seen as an exhaustive search for those locations that provide a maximum match between measured and modeled pressures. In this contribution, the authors propose to, instead of the exhaustive search, use an efficient global optimization method to search for the source locations that maximize the agreement between model and measurement. Advantages are two-fold. First, the efficient optimization allows for inclusion of more unknowns, such as the source position in three-dimensional or environmental parameters such as the speed of sound. Second, the model for the received pressure field can be readily adapted to reflect, for example, the presence of more sound sources or environmental parameters that affect the received signals. For the work considered, the global optimization method, Differential Evolution, is selected. Results with simulated and experimental data show that sources can be accurately identified, including the distance from the source to the array.

Beamforming correction for dipole measurement using two-dimensional microphone arrays.

In this paper, a beamforming correction for identifying dipole sources by means of phased microphone array measurements is presented and implemented numerically and experimentally. Conventional beamforming techniques, which are developed for monopole sources, can lead to significant errors when applied to reconstruct dipole sources. A previous correction technique to microphone signals is extended to account for both source location and source power for two-dimensional microphone arrays. The new dipole-beamforming algorithm is developed by modifying the basic source definition used for beamforming. This technique improves the previous signal correction method and yields a beamformer applicable to sources which are suspected to be dipole in nature. Numerical simulations are performed, which validate the capability of this beamformer to recover ideal dipole sources. The beamforming correction is applied to the identification of realistic aeolian-tone dipoles and shows an improvement of array performance on estimating dipole source powers.