CNS Core: Small: NNC: Networked Noise Cancellation

噪音无处不在，从人们在办公室的谈话到永无止境的交通堵塞和机场广播。目前的降噪技术以耳机和耳塞的形式出现，它们会发出抗噪声信号来抵消外部声音。耳机计算这种抗噪能力的时间非常短。这会导致一些噪音通过，这就是为什么所有这些设备都必须用噪音吸收材料覆盖整个耳朵。然而，长时间佩戴这样的阻耳装置并不舒适，甚至可能对健康有害。该提案旨在设计一种不会阻塞耳道的新型降噪架构。视觉是一个耳后设备，实现噪音消除一样好，最好的耳机或耳塞今天可用。这项研究背后的主要思想涉及将无线物联网（IoT）网络与噪声消除相结合。简而言之，麦克风被放置在环境中，其感测声音并将它们通过无线信号转发到耳机。由于无线信号的传播速度比声音快一百万倍，耳机可以在实际声音本身之前接收声音信息。类似于闪电和雷声-闪电在雷声之前到达，因此允许人们为巨大的隆隆声做准备-拟议的耳朵设备提前获得声音，并有更多的时间为人类耳朵产生更好的抗噪声信号。这种技术有可能改变“可穿戴”设备的未来，使人们可以连续佩戴它们，并更好地控制他们听到的东西。由于噪声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，因此对健康的影响也至关重要。核心研究贡献来自于通过网络和物联网透镜重新审视噪声消除的经典思想。该提案旨在证明新的架构是可能的，不仅允许额外的声学信号处理时间，而且还允许非因果滤波，这对更好的噪声消除至关重要。最后，该提案还展示了声音中的前瞻如何实现过滤器缓存和预加载，这是消除快速变化的声音（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-也就是说，噪音可以（部分）在耳朵上消除，而不需要佩戴耳设备。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

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.