Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
754854 Applied Acoustics 2012 12 Pages PDF
Abstract

Despite many attractive features and the potential for capturing sound in challenging acoustic environments, arrays with a large number of microphones have for a long time been discarded as a practical solution for speech acquisition. This is, among other reasons, due to the high production and computational costs. Only a few realizations of large microphone array systems have been documented, mainly for research and instrumentation use. The advent of MEMS microphones and computationally powerful off-the-shelf hardware has created new possibilities for microphone array development. We investigate a real life application, specifically the case of live sports broadcast, and the requirements that a such application imposes on a microphone array system. We present a system architecture of the first large (300 element circular array with a diameter of 2 m) MEMS microphone array system. In the proposed system, the latest technological advances are utilized to create a user-friendly array control interface. The array’s performance is examined in an anechoic chamber and on a crowded basketball field, and finally compared with existing solutions. The results illustrate the potential of a large MEMS microphone array as part of the technological development in sound acquisition for entertainment and security applications.

Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Engineering Mechanical Engineering
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