Size‐adaptive spherical receptor acceleration method for acoustical ray tracing

Randomized ray tracing in room acoustics can be used to compute echograms, but the results computed at the receptor are affected by statistical errors [1]. To decrease these statistical errors, the usual solution is to increase the number of rays, but this also increases the computation time. Another solution is to increase the receptor size, but this lowers the spatial resolution of the computed sound field, which is particularly important for the early part of the echogram. In order to decrease the computation time and keep a sufficient resolution, the method proposed in this paper is based on a progressive modification of the receptor size (spherical type) as long as the ray's travel grows. At the same time, the number of rays into the room can be decreased as the sound ray lengths increase while keeping the statistical errors more or less constant. The consequence is that the sound field spatial resolution evolves from “precise” at the beginning of the echogram to “rough” at its end. The first applica...