CNS Core: Small: NNC: Networked Noise Cancellation

噪音无处不在，从办公室里的人们交谈到无休止的交通拥堵和机场公告。目前的噪音消除技术是以耳机和耳塞的形式出现的，它们会发出抗噪音信号来抵消外部声音。耳机计算这种抗噪声能力的时间非常短。这会导致一些噪音通过，这就是为什么所有这些设备必须用吸音材料覆盖整个耳朵。然而，长时间佩戴这样的耳塞装置并不舒服，甚至可能对健康有害。这项提议旨在设计一种新的不堵塞耳道的降噪架构。VISION是一种耳后设备，可以实现与当今最好的耳机或耳塞一样好的噪音消除。这项研究背后的主要思想涉及将无线物联网(IoT)网络与噪音消除相结合。简而言之，麦克风被放置在感知声音的环境中，并通过无线信号将它们转发到耳机。由于无线信号的传播速度比声音快一百万倍，因此耳机可以在实际声音本身之前接收声音信息。与闪电和雷电类似--闪电比雷声早很多，因此可以让人们为巨大的隆隆声做好准备--所提出的耳机提前获得声音，有更多的时间为人的耳朵产生更好的抗噪音信号。这种技术有可能改变可穿戴设备的未来，这样人们就可以连续佩戴它们，并更好地控制他们听到的东西。这对健康的影响也是至关重要的，因为噪音污染正在成为主要的健康问题之一，特别是在发展中地区的城市地区。核心研究贡献来自于重新审视网络和物联网镜头消除噪音的经典理念。该提案旨在证明，新的体系结构是可能的，它不仅为声信号处理提供了更多的时间，而且还允许非因果过滤，这对更好地消除噪声至关重要。最后，该提案还展示了声音中的前视如何启用过滤器缓存和预加载，这是取消快速变化的声音(如人类对话)所必需的。在这些基础上，该提案还热衷于将这些想法扩展到无设备噪音消除--即可以在不需要可穿戴耳机的情况下从耳朵(部分)消除噪音的想法。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Noise is everywhere, from people talking in offices to the never-ending traffic jams and airport announcements. Current noise canceling technology comes in the form of headphones and earbuds, which emit an anti-noise signal to counteract the external sounds. The time available for the headphones to compute this anti-noise is extremely short. This results in some noise getting through, which is why all these devices must cover the entire ear with noise-absorbing material. However, wearing such ear-blocking devices for long periods of time is not comfortable, and can even be harmful to health. This proposal aims to design a new noise-canceling architecture that does not block the ear canal. The vision is a behind-the-ear device that achieves noise cancellation as good as the best headphones or earbuds available today. The main idea behind this research involves combining wireless Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks with noise cancellation. Briefly, a microphone is placed in the environment that senses sounds and forwards them over wireless signals to an earpiece. Since wireless signals travel a million times faster than sound, the earpiece can receive the sound information in advance of the actual sound itself. Similar to lightning and thunder -- where the lightning arrives much before the thunder, hence allowing people to prepare for the loud rumble -- the proposed ear device gets the sound in advance and has much more time to produce a better anti-noise signal for human ears. Such technology has the potential to change the future of "earable" devices so that people can wear them continuously and enjoy much better control on what they hear. The implications on health are also crucial since noise pollution is becoming one of the major health concerns, especially in urban areas in developing regions.The core research contributions emerge from re-visiting classical ideas in noise cancellation with a networking and IoT lens. The proposal intends to demonstrate that new architectures are possible that not only allow additional time for acoustic signal processing, but also allow for non-causal filtering, crucial to better noise cancellation. Finally, the proposal also shows how lookahead in the sound enables filter caching and pre-loading, necessary to cancel fast changing sounds (like human conversations). Building on these foundations, the proposal is also keen on extending the ideas to device-free noise cancellation -- that is, the idea that noise can be (partially) cancelled at the ear without the need of a wearable ear-device.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.