Development and Evaluation of Light-Weight Active Noise Cancellation Earphones

Abstract

This paper presents the development of active noise control (ANC) for light-weight earphones, and proposes using music or natural sound to estimate the critical secondary path model instead of extra random noise. Three types of light-weight ANC earphones including in-ear, earbud, and clip phones are developed. Real-time experiments are conducted to evaluate their performance using the built-in microphone inside KEMAR's ear and to compare with commercially-available ANC headphones and earphones. Experimental results show that the developed light-weight ANC earphones achieve higher noise reduction than the commercial ANC headphones and earphones, and the in-ear ANC earphone has the best noise reduction performance.

Iterative learning approach to active noise control of highly autocorrelated signals with applications to machinery noise

“…In practice, one could hardly expect any ANC system to be effective up to 8 kHz because at such high frequencies the volume of space in which the cancellation occurs becomes very small. Indeed, papers [3, 6 ] report successful cancellation of acoustic noise up to about 3 kHz, and similar performance could likely be expected from the proposed approach in practice. We, therefore, note that our main point here was to demonstrate that the proposed approach is capable of cancelling narrowband disturbances with very rich harmonic structure, rather than to make the simulation accurate up to the finest details.…”

“…The active approach is particularly effective at low frequencies [1, 2 ] and, because of the rapid progress that occurs in the digital signal processing technology, becomes an increasingly more attractive alternative to the passive approach at these frequencies. Successful applications of the active approach in the area of noise control include, among others, active headsets and motorcycle helmets [4–6 ], the cancellation of acoustic noise propagating through ducts [2 ], and medical applications [7–9 ]. The active approach was also found helpful in reducing vibrations in ultra‐precision machining [10 ], optical/magnetic drives [11, 12 ], or helicopters [13 ].…”

Feedback Controller Optimization for Active Noise Control Headphones Considering Frequency Response Mismatch between Microphone and Human Ear

“…Zhang et al [7] proposed an intuitive approach where the feedback controller is first designed in frequency domain and then approximated by an FIR filter. With the IMC structure, the feedback controller could even be made fully adaptive [8]. However, the modeling errors of the secondary path deteriorate the stability bound of the system [9] and the waterbed effect should also be taken care of [10].…”

Noise Reduction Using Active Vibration Control Methods in CAD/CAM Dental Milling Machines

“…While these passive noise control techniques can help facilitate noise control of mid and high frequencies, they are inefficient and costly at lower frequencies. The active method uses an active noise control (ANC) system to cancel the unwanted noise based on the principle of superposition [7]. Specifically, identical amplitude and antiphase anti-noise is created and actively integrated with the first noise, thereby triggering the elimination of both noises [8].…”