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Phased Array Microphone (2023)

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Re: Phased Array Microphone (2023)

#21

Post by adamcharnock »

I would love to see this come to our various mobile devices in a nicely packaged form. I think part of what is holding back assistants, universal-translators, etc, is poor audio. Both reducing noise and being able to detect direction has a huge potential to help (I want to live-translate a group conversation around a dining table, for example).

Firstly it would be great if my phone + headphones could combine the microphones to this end. But what if all phones in the immediate vicinity could cooperate to provide high quality directional audio? (Assuming privacy issues could be addressed).

Re: Phased Array Microphone (2023)

#22

Post by FredPret »

dllu wrote: post #3

I once did a project to do multilateration of bats (the flying mammal) using an array of 4 microphones arranged in a big Y shape on the ground. Using the time difference of arrival at the four microphones, we could find the positions of each bat that flew over the array, as well as identify the species. It was used for an environmental study to determine the impact of installing wind turbines. Fun times.

I had no idea they were mammals until this comment. I thought they were furry birds!

Re: Phased Array Microphone (2023)

#23

Post by hatsunearu »

adamcharnock wrote: post #21

I would love to see this come to our various mobile devices in a nicely packaged form. I think part of what is holding back assistants, universal-translators, etc, is poor audio. Both reducing noise and being able to detect direction has a huge potential to help (I want to live-translate a group conversation around a dining table, for example). Firstly it would be great if my phone + headphones could combine the micr…

It's already kind of implemented.

Re: Phased Array Microphone (2023)

#24

Post by bafe »

dllu wrote: post #3

I once did a project to do multilateration of bats (the flying mammal) using an array of 4 microphones arranged in a big Y shape on the ground. Using the time difference of arrival at the four microphones, we could find the positions of each bat that flew over the array, as well as identify the species. It was used for an environmental study to determine the impact of installing wind turbines. Fun times.

I did a similar project at 18. Needless to say I didn't have enough HW and SW skills to do much since I implemented the most naive form of the TDOA algorithms as well as the most inefficient way of estimating the time difference through cross correlation. I still learnt a lot and it led me to eventually getting a PhD in SAR systems, which are actually beamformers using the movement of the platform instead of an array

Re: Phased Array Microphone (2023)

#26

Post by Salmonfisher11 »

spankalee wrote: post #14
proee wrote: post #6

What is the most practical application for this technology? Could you use it to pinpoint sounds coming from a car like a squeak?

I've always wanted this for videoconferencing room. A microphone array around the screen should be able to dynamically focus on the active talkers and cancel out background noise and echos to get much better sound quality that the muddy crap we usually get. If there were a speaker array around the screens too, you might be able to localize the audio for each person so that it seems like the sound is coming from where…

Beamforming is standard in modern conference room gear. It's being used for making a video focus on the active speaker and optimizing his audio.

Have a look at the "Meeting Owl" for example.

It works great up to a limit (around 5m) then you will need additional microphones closer to the speaker.

Re: Phased Array Microphone (2023)

#27

Post by Marthinwurer »

frankus wrote: post #15

"As part of the calibration, the speed of sound is also a parameter which is optimized to obtain the best model of the system, which allows this whole procedure to act as a ridiculously overengineered thermometer." Reminds me of the electronics adage: "all sensors are temperature sensors, some measure other things as well."

I love these kind of inadvertent measurements. One of my favorite examples is that a sufficiently accurate IMU can get you relatively accurate longitude measurements from the Coriolis effect.

Re: Phased Array Microphone (2023)

#28

Post by brudgers »

brunosan wrote: post #5

Armchair comment. I would LOVE to be a grad student again and try to pair it with ultrasound speaker arrays, for medical applications. Essentially a super HIFU (High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound) with live feedback. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focused_ultrasound

Then, why not be a grad student again?

Re: Phased Array Microphone (2023)

#29

Post by markedathome »

spankalee wrote: post #14
proee wrote: post #6

What is the most practical application for this technology? Could you use it to pinpoint sounds coming from a car like a squeak?

I've always wanted this for videoconferencing room. A microphone array around the screen should be able to dynamically focus on the active talkers and cancel out background noise and echos to get much better sound quality that the muddy crap we usually get. If there were a speaker array around the screens too, you might be able to localize the audio for each person so that it seems like the sound is coming from where…

Microsoft Research had papers on speaker arrays that allowed speaker focus and noise cancelling a couple of decades ago. I think the technology eventually ended up in the Kinect.

I think Cisco had something similar in their large screen meeting room video conferencing systems that could do positional audio tracking of multiple people. Could be wrong, but I think that was at least 10 years or so ago, if not more.

Re: Phased Array Microphone (2023)

#30

Post by always_swapping »

brunosan wrote: post #5

Armchair comment. I would LOVE to be a grad student again and try to pair it with ultrasound speaker arrays, for medical applications. Essentially a super HIFU (High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound) with live feedback. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focused_ultrasound

I may be the FUS grad student you seek. Reach out via profile email if you want to chat. Cheers!
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