I-Corps: Real Time Acoustic Beamforming for Directed Listening

这个I-Corp项目研究通过实时波束形成增强噪声环境中通信的传感器系统。调查将确定一个系统，包括多个麦克风，一个现场可编程门阵列，和相关的电子实现波束形成在真实的时间，以提高信号噪声比在听声源的潜力。该系统最好被描述为“声学双筒望远镜”，因为它使收听者能够听到远离收听者的柔和声音或嘈杂环境中的正常声音。所提出的创新解决了在嘈杂环境中和在放大安静源中引导收听注意力的问题。它克服了现有的声学波束成形产品的缺点，包括显著的计算延迟，仅呈现声源的方向（而不提供用于收听的波束成形信号），以及缺乏对大量麦克风的可扩展性。原型系统是可扩展的，并在真实的时间执行波束形成，因此，它有能力大大提高信噪比，以及提供波束形成的信号100 kHz的数据速率进行监听。该技术在许多产品方面具有潜在的影响，例如，用于飞行员、乘客和噪音设备/车辆操作员的听力设备，以提高在噪音环境中的听力注意力，以及用于在安全距离内进行音频监控的设备。所提出的技术还可以扩展到医疗和结构超声成像设备，尽管现有的原型仅针对声学波束成形。将实时波束形成架构扩展到超声成像（医学或结构成像），提供了增强从现有最安全的非侵入性成像方法之一获得的图像的潜力。

This I-Corp project investigates sensor systems for enhancing communication in noisy environments through real-time beamforming. The investigation will determine potential of a system incorporating multiple microphones, a field programmable gate array, and associated electronics to implement beamforming in real time to enhance signal-to-noise ratio in listening to acoustic sources. The system is best described as "acoustic binoculars" as it enables the listener to hear soft sounds originating away from the listener or normal sounds in noisy environments. The proposed innovation addresses the problem of directing listening attention in noisy environments and in amplifying quiet sources. It overcomes shortcomings in existing products for acoustic beamforming, which include significant computational delay, presentation of only the direction of an acoustic source (without providing the beamformed signal for listening), and lack of scalability to large numbers of microphones. The prototype system is scalable and performs beamforming in real time; hence, it has the capacity to increase signal-to-noise ratio dramatically as well as to provide the beamformed signal 100 kHz data rates for listening. The technology has potential impact in the form of a number of products, e.g., listening devices for pilots, passengers, and operators of noisy equipment/vehicles to enhance listening attention in noisy environments and devices for audio-based surveillance from a safe distance. The proposed technology may also extend to medical and structural ultrasonic imaging devices, although existing prototypes have been directed only towards acoustic beamforming. Extending the real-time beamforming architecture to ultrasonic imaging (medical or structure imaging), provides the potential to enhance images derived from what is one of the safest non-invasive imaging methods in existence.