Directional monitoring terminal for aircraft noise

This paper presents a concept of an aircraft noise monitoring terminal (NMT) that reduces background noise and the influence of ground reflection, in comparison with a single microphone. Also, it automatically identifies aircraft sound events based on the direction of arrival of the sound rather than on the sound pressure level (or radar data). And moreover, it provides an indicator of the quality of the sound pressure level measurement, i.e. if it is possibly disturbed by extraneous sources. The performance of this NMT is experimentally tested under real conditions in a measurement site close to Zurich airport. The results show that the NMT unambiguously identifies the noise events generated by the target aircraft, correctly detects those aircraft noise events that may be disturbed by the presence of other sources, and offers a substantial reduction in background and ground reflected sound.