REPORT ON

Submitted by-: Manish Gaur SG7525 ECE(4th year) SSGPURC

INDEX

page no.

1. INTRODUCTION............................................................3

2. TECHNICAL BACKGROUND...........................................6

3. ANC CONFIGURATION..................................................8

4. SYSTEM DESIGN..........................................................10

5. DEVELOPMENT OF PROGRAM....................................13

6. RESEARCH ACTIVITIES.................................................16

7. DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES.........................................20

8. BIBILIOGRAPHY...........................................................23

Introduction

What is active noise control? Active control is sound field modification, particularly sound field cancellation, by electro acoustical means. In its simplest form, a control system drives a speaker to produce a sound field that is an exact mirror-image the offending sound (the "disturbance"). The speaker thus "cancels" the disturbance, and the net result is no sound at all. In practice, of course, active control is somewhat more complicated. The name differentiates "active control" from traditional "passive" methods for controlling unwanted sound and vibration. Passive noise control treatments include "insulation", silencers, vibration mounts, damping treatments, absorptive treatments such as ceiling tiles, and conventional mufflers like the ones used on today s automobiles. Passive techniques work best at middle and high frequencies, and are important to nearly all products in today s increasingly noise-sensitive world. But passive treatments can be bulky and heavy when used for low frequencies. The size and mass of passive treatments usually depend on the acoustic wavelength, making them thicker and more massive for lower frequencies. The light weight and small size of active systems can be a critically important benefit. In control systems parlance, the main four parts of an active control system are -: 1. The Plant is the physical system to be controlled; typical examples are a headphone and the air inside it, or air traveling through an air-conditioning duct. 2. Sensors are the microphones accelerometers, or other devices that sense the disturbance and monitor how well the control system is performing.

3. Actuators are the devices that physically do the work of altering the plant response; usually they are electromechanical devices such as speakers or vibration generators. 4. The Controller is a signal processor (usually digital) that tells the actuators what to do, the controller bases its commands on sensor signals and, usually, on some knowledge of how the plant responds to the actuators. Analog controllers may also be used, although they are somewhat less flexible and thus more difficult to use.

Technical Background

Active noise control requires multifarious knowledge, such as measurement, analog and digital signal processing and acoustics. Design of active noise control systems needs measurements on the plant to be controlled. The records derived during the measurements play an essential role in plant identification and system simulation. Algorithm design and evaluation has a central role. It should be in close ties with the other parts of the design process. The main task is to implement or improve digital signal processing methods can be used for this purpose. Although the design needs the first measurement results, involving the a priori knowledge in the field (literature, experiences) the work on this task can be started at the beginning of the design. This task includes theoretical derivations, simulations and laboratory experiments. Due to the special features (e.g. high temperature) of the possible acoustic systems, the active noise control system needs special hardware tools. Sensor and actuator design is an important part of the system design. The final part requires industrial experiments giving feedback to the above parts of the design. This experimental phase is also for revealing the scope of active noise control for the actual purpose.

Active noise control Configuration

The ANC developer kit to implement is working in an acoustic configuration as shown in figure 1. Figure 1. Block diagram of the basic active noise controller

A personal computer, equipped with a low cost soundcard like any Soundblaster or compatible card, and with an audio software like CoolEdit , can generate any kind of noise signal in a loop mode. The CoolEdit software generates many types of periodic signals and three different random signals. The maximum frequency of these signals is 500 Hz. The attenuation of higher frequencies is irrelevant because the silent zone is only one tenth of the acoustic wavelength . For an acoustic wave of 500 Hz the effective silent zone is only 7 cm. One of the two channels of a stereo file, noise generated by the soundcard, is applied to one powered speaker to produce an undesired acoustic noise to cancel (figure 1). The other channel is applied to one input of the DSP starter kit, the active noise controller. The DSP produces an output signal that is also applied to another powered speaker, trying to cancel the noise. A microphone catches both added noises. This signal makes the DSP to work properly in order to reach the maximum attenuation.

System Design

The noise cancellation circuit works by detecting the noise of the surrounding environment using a microphone attached to the earpieces of the headset. Once this noise is detected, it can be inverted and added to a desired signal (such as music from a cd player or a twoway radio communication). This is done in the active noise control block shown in Figure . Since the output of this block is the signal and the inverted noise, the incoming noise from the surrounding environment will add to this and leave just the desired signal for the user to hear.

Figure - ANC Block Diagram

Following is the noise cancellation block from above Figure as a simplified mono three-stage amplifier circuit. As can be seen, the noise is inverted and amplified while the desired signal is only amplified.
Figure 0 -Mono Three-stage Amplifier Circuit

Development of the ANC program (DSP code)

All the active noise controller is written in an ASCII editor. This file is assembled, creating an object file that is loaded with a RS-232 interface to the DSP. The structure of the program is shown in the next figure. The main program runs in a loop from BEGINNING to BEGIN TO BEGIN. Previously an include file (setup.asm) initializes all the parameters, variables and memory used. The memory configuration is of great importance because there are many algorithms working together.

Research Activities

Conventional noise controllers are usually adaptive filters, with the parameters updated mainly on LMS basis. The first systems for this task were feedback systems. The most successful applications of them are single channel systems in which the loudspeaker is closely positioned to the error microphone (e.g. an ear defender). The next step was the implementation of feed forward controllers. These systems need an additional reference signal which is correlated with the primary noise. Feed forward control was successfully implemented in various active noise systems. Such adaptive systems utilize the filtered-X LMS (XLMS) algorithm, therefore they need a built-in model on the acoustic path between the secondary source and the microphone. The accuracy of this model influences the success of the control. Adaptive systems are able to suppress both broadband and harmonic noise.

Periodic noise control

If the noise to be suppressed is periodic, adaptive feed forward control is straightforward, because of the easily available reference signal. This control task is rather simple, therefore the controller should be simple, as well. However, the structure of the usual adaptive controllers is similar to that for broadband noise control. The aim of our first research work was to design an adequate controller, which is fitted to periodic noise cancelation providing simpler structure and better control results than the conventional adaptive controllers. The theoretical background of such a controller design is the adaptive Fourier analysis. The adaptive Fourier analyzer (AFA) is a structurally adaptive system for exact measurement of band-limited periodic signals of arbitrary fundamental frequency. It is an extension of the resonator based observers developed earlier to perform the recursive discrete Fourier transform (RDFT). In these observers the resonators work in a common feedback loop providing zero steady-state feedback

error at the resonator frequencies. The AFA adapts the resonator frequencies to coincide with those in the input signal. The proposed noise controller can be considered as an extension of the AFA.

Broadband noise control

The experience with periodic noise controller design helped us to extend the ideas to the field of broadband noise control. In the scope of the research is the convergence of the LMS based adaptive filter structure. Adaptive filters updated by the least mean square (LMS) algorithm are successfully utilized for both identification and control purposes in active noise control systems. In the case of noise control, the output of the adaptive filter drives the secondary loudspeaker, and the error signal is derived by the microphone only at the end of the secondary path. In such cases the filtered reference LMS (XLMS) algorithm guarantees the stable adaptation. Multiple channel systems utilize the multiple error LMS algorithm. However, the convergence of these algorithms can be very slow, depending on the transfer function of the secondary path. We have introduced a novel algorithm which provides much higher convergence rate than the XLMS algorithm. The proposed structure is a modification of the XLMS structure: in addition to the filter in the reference signal path, a secondary filter is applied, and the same filter is applied in the error signal path. This secondary filter is designed so that the resulted magnitude response in the adaptation loop oscillates around the unity. The proposed algorithm was extended also for mutiple channel active noise control. Numerical and practical examples verify that the proposed method improves the convergence rate significantly without high additional computational demand.

Development activities

Active noise control for industrial phones

It is often unavoidable that phones in a factory work in a very noisy environment. Noise of different machines and equipment is also transmitted in the phone line. There are passive methods to suppress this noise, but they cannot solve the problem. Active noise control is a possibility for efficient noise suppression, even if the spectra of the speech and the noise are overlapped in the frequency domain. The solution is depicted in the figure below.

Active noise control for airplanes

Propeller-driven airplanes generate a high-level noise which is disturbing for the passengers. The problem was posed by the airplane manufacturer Fokker, and the experiments were made at the Technische Physische Dienst in Delft, the Netherlands. Unfortunately, the successful experiments were interrupted because of the breakdown of Fokker.

Bibliography

Analog Circuit References

[1] Ryckebusch, Jules (1997) Build These Noise-Canceling Headphones, Internet document. http://headwize2.powerpill.org/projects/showproj.php?file=noise_prj. htm.

Algorithm References
[2] Ruckman, C.E. (1995) "Frequently Asked Questions: Active Noise Control," Internet FAQ document. Available via anonymous ftp from ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/active-noise-control-faq, or via Usenet in news:news.answers. [3] Franklin, Gene F. "Feedback Control of Dynamic Systems" 4th ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002. [4] Hansen, Colin H. "Understanding Active Noise Cancellation". London and New York: Spon Press, 2001.