Sound field control in the automotive environment

Active control of engine and road noise in the automotive environment has been investigated within the automotive industry for around 20 years. This interest is due to both the potential to reduce vehicle noise, and the ability to remove passive noise control treatments and, therefore, improve fuel efficiency. The most successful commercial systems have generally used the loudspeakers of the car audio system to globally control engine or road noise at low frequencies. It is also possible to use such control systems to manipulate the sound quality of the engine, through targeted attenuation and enhancement of particular engine orders. In a similar way, an array of loudspeakers can be used to control the spatial distribution of reproduced sound within the automotive environment, in order to create a localised region of audio reproduction. This paper will first outline the limitations of global active control in the automotive environment, and then demonstrate how some of these limitations may be overcome by using a local active control strategy. The physical limitations of active noise control will then be linked to the limitations on the generation of localised audio sound zones within the car cabin. Practical examples of a number different automotive sound field control systems will be presented in order to demonstrate their potential performance.

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