Date of Award

5-2020

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Departmental Honors

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Abstract

In many applications it is desirable to focus on the direction a signal is coming from to isolate the signal from interfering noise coming from other directions. This is often done by focusing the receiver on a given direction. One method to accomplish this focusing is to use an array of receivers and a signal processing algorithm called beamforming. This algorithm attenuates signals coming from all other directions besides the direction of interest, which can be viewed pictorially as a beam. However, it would also benefit many applications to be able to focus on a location rather than just a direction. This can be accomplished in the nearfield using two beamforming arrays. When these two arrays are used together their beams cross in a location and focus on the signals coming from that location. However, another approach that could be taken to accomplish this locational targeting of a signal, in the nearfield, would be to take advantage of the spherical wave front coming from the signal source to identify its origin. Using the Whittaker-Shannon interpolation formula, locational beamforming can be accomplished that would require only one array of microphones. In order to understand the benefits and differences of both approaches, they were both implemented using an array of microphones and a desktop computer and then tested in a soundproof room. The goal of this experiment was to test the spatial separation capabilities of each algorithm.

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Faculty Mentor

Todd Moon