Active Noise Control Using a Functional Link Artificial Neural Network with the Simultaneous Perturbation Learning Rule

An enhanced multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) filtered-x least mean square (FXLMS) algorithm using improved virtual secondary path is proposed as the basis for an active noise control (ANC) system for treating vehicle powertrain noise. This new algorithm is developed to overcome the limitation caused by the frequency-dependent property of the standard FXLMS algorithm and to reduce the variation of convergence speed inherent in multiple-channel cases, in order to improve the overall performance of the control system. In this study, the convergence property of the proposed algorithm is analyzed in the frequency domain in order to yield a better understanding of the physical meaning of the virtual secondary path. In practice, because of the arrangement and sensitivities of the actuators (speakers), transducers (microphones), and physical environment, the magnitude response of the main secondary paths can be very different from each other. This difference will cause difficulty in the overall convergence of the algorithm, which will result in minimal attenuation at some of the channels. The proposed channel equalized (CE) virtual secondary path algorithm is designed to tackle this difficulty by equalizing the mean magnitude level of the main secondary paths and by adjusting other secondary paths correspondingly to keep the coupling effects among the control channels unchanged. The performance of the proposed algorithm is validated by analyzing a two-input two-output active powertrain noise control system.

Excessive noise levels inside infants incubators in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) contribute to number of harmful effects on the infant's health. This paper develops and implements practical active noise control (ANC) systems for the infant incubators. The filtered-X least mean square (FXLMS) algorithm is used to cancel the noise inside the incubator. The multi-channel and pseudo multi-channel ANC systems are proposed to enhance the noise cancellation performance in terms of cancellation gain and quiet zone. An experimental setup based on real Giraffe incubator from GE Healthcare is used for real-time experiments. The results show that the ANC system can dramatically reduce the noise and cost effective.

The intake system in an automotive engine has a short duct compared with that of the exhaust system. The filtered-x LMS (FX-LMS) algorithm has been applied to the active noise control (ANC) system in a short acoustic duct. This algorithm design is based on the FIR (finite impulse response) filter; however, it has a slow convergence issue due to a large number of zero coefficients. To improve the convergence performance, the step size of the LMS algorithm was modified from fixed to variable. However, this algorithm is still not suitable for the ANC system of a short acoustic duct because the reference signal is affected by the backward acoustic wave propagated from a secondary source. Therefore, the recursive filtered-u LMS algorithm (FU-LMS) based on the infinite impulse response (IIR) is developed to consider backward acoustic propagation. Generally, this algorithm has a stability problem. The stability issue was improved using an error-smoothing filter. In this paper, the recursive LMS algorithm with a variable step size and smoothing error filter is designed. This recursive LMS algorithm, the FU-VSSLMS algorithm, uses an IIR filter. With fast convergence and good stability, this algorithm is suitable for the ANC system in a short acoustic duct, such as the intake system of an automotive engine. This algorithm is applied to the ANC system of a short acoustic duct. The disturbance signals used as primary noise source are a sinusoidal signal embedded in white noise and the chirp signal, which has a variable instantaneous frequency. The test results demonstrate that the FU-VSSLMS algorithm has a superior convergence performance when compared with the FX-LMS and FX-LMS algorithms. The algorithm can be successfully applied to the ANC system in a short duct, such as the intake duct.

Based on the theoretical analysis of literature, saturation in measured signal of active noise control (ANC) systems will degrade the convergence speed. However, the experiments show that the saturated input signal can speed up the convergence of the narrow-band ANC systems. This paper intends to remodel the saturation effects for feedforward and feedback ANC systems. Combining the action of analog-to-digital converters (ADC), the mathematical expression and block diagrams are proposed to model the saturation effects in the practical ANC systems. The derivation and simulation results show that since the saturation is able to amplify the principle component of signal, the convergence would be speeded up.

It is important to remove large environmental noise in measurement using SQUIDs without magnetic shielding. Here, the environmental noise has been reduced by an active noise control (ANC) system in the MHz radio-frequency region. The ANC system including a phase and amplitude control circuit has been designed to allow precise adjustments of the phase and the amplitude of the anti-phase wave against the noise waves in the MHz region. In this paper, a sinusoidal wave in the MHz range was used as the radio frequency interference. When a SQUID was used for a signal detector, the ANC system suppressed this sinusoidal wave to the white noise level by about 54 dB. The performance of the ANC system for the chemical detection by nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) was checked in a simulated environment. One was the case of a real AM radio broadcasting signal with the dummy NQR signal and another was the real NQR signal with a sinusoidal wave as noise. For both cases, the ANC showed good performance for MHz range noise cancellation.

Cascading time-frequency domain filtered-x LMS algorithm for active control of uncorrelated disturbances

A robust evolutionary feedforward active noise control system using Wilcoxon norm and particle swarm optimization algorithm

This paper proposes a method for shortening the distance from a noise detection microphone to a loudspeaker forming the feedforward type of active noise control (ANC) system. In the ANC system, the primary noise detected by the noise detection microphone and the secondary noise provided by the loudspeaker is required simultaneously arriving at another microphone, called error microphone, monitoring the effect of the active noise control. However, the reverberation involved in the secondary path from the loudspeaker to the error microphone increase the secondary noise components arriving later than the primary noise. The late components are not only invalid for cancelling the primary noise but also impede the cancellation. This paper hence proposes a method reducing the components by forming the noise control filter synthesizing the secondary noise with the cascade connection of an infinite and a finite impulse response filters. The distance can be thereby shortened.

Multichannel feedforward active noise control system combined with noise source separation by microphone arrays

Active control for vehicle interior noise based on DWT-FxLMS algorithm using a piezoelectric feedback system

Objectives: In case of medical emergency, an ambulance uses siren (which produces noise up to 120 dB) to alert the traffic on the road to give way. However, siren noise is troublesome to the patient lying inside. This calls for noise control inside the ambulance. Methods/Statistical Analysis: The passive noise control methods are not feasible and economically inviable so active noise control (ANC) method is applied. The ANC is electro-acoustic technique in which the noise signal is acquired and noise with opposite phase is produced and overlapped on input noise to suppress the same. The weights are updated using adaptive algorithms so as to reduce the error in ANC system. In present work, least mean square (LMS) and filtered- reference least mean square (FxLMS) algorithm based ANC systems are applied and compared for ambulance siren noise reduction. MATLAB is used for simulating the ANC systems. Findings: Both the algorithms are compared on the basis of residual noise and smoothened ensemble average square error (SEASE). From the results, it is found that both algorithms LMS and FxLMS are good in noise reduction. The noise reduction for FxLMS based ANC system is 28 dB whereas it is 25 dB for LMS based ANC system, which indicates the superiority of FxLMS algorithm over LMS algorithm. The results are obtained analytically as well as indicated by power spectral density (PSD) plots of the residual noise. The comparison of SEASE for both algorithms also indicates better performance for FxLMS algorithm. The ANC system based on FxLMS algorithm is more stable as it considers the secondary path which includes practical components such as ADC, DAC, etc. Applications/Improvements: The results indicate that FxLMS algorithm based on ANC system can be implemented on the hardware using DSP processor. It can be further used for the other applications of noise reduction such as server noise, vacuum cleaner, etc. Keywords: Active Noise Control, Ambulance Siren Noise, FxLMS Algorithm, LMS

The main focus of this paper is the acoustic feedback path neutralisation during online operation of the single‐channel active noise control (ANC) systems. Invasive techniques, in which additive auxiliary noise is injected for online feedback path modelling (FBPM), degrade the noise‐reduction performance of ANC systems. In the existing methods for online FBPM, additive auxiliary noise with fixed variance is injected during all operating conditions of ANC systems. In this paper, a scheduling strategy is proposed to have time‐varying gain for additive auxiliary noise. The time‐varying gain is computed on the basis of (i) the convergence status of the FBPM filter, and (ii) the power of the interference term in the error signal of the FBPM filter. Simulation results show that, compared to the existing methods, the proposed method can better achieve the conflicting requirements of fast convergence of the FBPM filter, and reduced steady‐state power of the residual error at the error microphone. For sake of completeness, appendix presents typical simulation results when both the secondary path and feedback path are simultaneously identified during online operation of ANC systems.

Infant incubators are widely used in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) for the pre-term or sick babies. In this paper, we propose an active noise control (ANC) system integrated with infant cry detection and classification function for infant incubators. The incubator ANC system reduces the high noise level which results in numerous adverse health effects for infants, and the cry detector and analyzer monitors the infants' physical conditions using the same ANC system hardware. The infant crying signals picked up by the error microphone of ANC inside the incubator are detected, the signals' features are extracted by using linear prediction coding (LPC), and Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) methods. The database of different signals and their associated infant health features will be established through training phase. The signal classification algorithm is based on shortest distance and Bayesian classifier. Simulation is conducted to evaluate the performance of proposed system using a Giraffe incubator from GE Healthcare. The experiments show that the proposed ANC system can reduce the harmful noise and the cry classification algorithm can recognize infant cries in order to develop the innovative, low cost methods to monitor the infant's health conditions.

An important step for active noise control (ANC) systems to be practical is to develop model independent ANC (MIANC) systems that tolerate parameter variations in sound fields. Reliabilities and stabilities of many MIANC systems depend on results of online system identifications. Parameter errors due to system identifications may threaten closed-loop stabilities of MIANC systems. A self-learning active noise control (SLANC) system is proposed in this study to stabilize and optimize an ANC system in case identified parameters are unreliable. The proposed system uses an objective function to check closed-loop stability. If partial or full value of the objective function exceeds a conservatively preset threshold, a stability threat is detected and the SLANC system will stabilize and optimize the controller without using parameters of sound fields. If the reference signal is available, the SLANC system can be combined with a feedforward controller to generate both destructive interference and active damping in sound fields. The self-learning method is simple and stable for many feedback ANC systems to deal with a worst case discussed in this study.

Impulsive noise reduction is a special problem raised in active noise control (ANC) systems. The filtered-x least mean square (FxLMS) algorithm is a typical ANC method that has been successfully applied in practical applications. Some variants such as the logarithmic FxLMS and modified FxLMS algorithms have been proposed to deal with the impulsive noise for ANC. However, those methods require considerable computational loading in real-time applications. In this paper, a modified median FxLMS method is proposed for its low complexity to avoid the effect of the impulsive noise. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has better averaged noise reduction performance than the conventional FxLMS and other order statistics based FxLMS algorithms. In addition, the computational complexity stays the minimum requirement through using only the ordering operation, which is very suitable for the real-time implementation.