Low-Frequency Sound Field Control in a Reverberant Room with a Single Active Controller Source.

The operation of a single active controller source in a reverberant room has been investigated. The system consists of a controlled transducer source and a near-source microphone, with electronics arranged as a closed feedback loop. The controller system responds to a single source placed arbitrarily in the room. A theoretical analysis is presented based on the two port model of the controller transducer interfaced to an equivalent description of the reverberant room. The room acoustic transfer impedances between the active controller, room exciter source, near controller pressure sensor, and an arbitrary point in the reverberant sound field are described by a Green's function model. To minimize resonant effects of the controller piston diaphragm, a second control feedback loop using a diaphragm mounted accelerometer was added to the pressure control loop. Examples of the controller system operation were drawn from a computer model. Experimental data were gathered in a test reverberation room at the Applied Research Laboratory of The Pennsylvania State University. This investigation has brought forth three factors which define the limits on wide band control loop gain. They are (i) the position of an accelerometer on the controller diaphragm, (ii) the spacing between the controller and pressure sensor microphone, and (iii) the first mode frequency and the Q of the controller diaphragm. These system and transducer constraints can introduce instability in the control system. The controller system operation in the room has been modeled as a lumped element ideal piston using a flow graph representation. Additional loops on the graph are used to represent non-ideal transducer aberrations, and to define the pressure at various points in the room. Four cases for controller operation have been defined based on the proximity of the room source, the pressure sensor, and the controller. Two of these are important for practical applications: (i) the sensor microphone and controller source together, but the room source and the field point remote, and (ii) the sensor, controller, and exciter source together with the field point remote. In the latter configuration, computer simulations of the room sound field, with and without control, show that appreciable sound reduction can be achieved.