This article presents the design and implementation of an active noise control (ANC) headphone system with a directional hear-through capability and compares the performance of this system to that of a standard hear-through headphone system. The directional hear-through ANC headphones are a novel integration of microphone array beamforming and ANC technologies into a pair of headphones, which provide the consumer with additional functionality and new, digitally augmented ways to interact with their acoustic environment. As the microphone array is necessarily compact, superdirective beamforming is utilised to increase its low and mid frequency directional performance. In this unique integration of two current consumer technologies, first, the ANC subsystem attempts to maximise the attenuation and then the beamformer output is added to the control signal and reproduced by the headphones’ loudspeakers, with the appropriate compensation to avoid self-cancellation. The experimental study demonstrates that the proposed spatially selective ANC headphones provide a hear-through capability in the look direction, whilst reducing ambient noise and enabling the wearer to experience reduced noise communication in a noisy environment. The proposed system thus offers the consumer the potential for an electronically enhanced acoustic experience, allowing a selective reduction in environmental noise whilst desired exterior noise remains audible.

中文翻译：

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一种具有定向直通功能的有源噪声控制耳机的设计与实现

本文介绍了具有定向听通功能的有源噪声控制 (ANC) 耳机系统的设计和实现，并将该系统的性能与标准听通耳机系统的性能进行了比较。定向听通 ANC 耳机是将麦克风阵列波束成形和 ANC 技术新颖地集成到一副耳机中，为消费者提供额外的功能和新的数字增强方式来与他们的声学环境进行交互。由于麦克风阵列必须紧凑，因此使用超指向波束成形来提高其低频和中频指向性能。在两种当前消费技术的独特整合中，首先，ANC 子系统尝试最大化衰减，然后将波束形成器输出添加到控制信号并由耳机的扬声器再现，并进行适当的补偿以避免自我抵消。实验研究表明，所提出的空间选择性 ANC 耳机在视线方向上提供了听通能力，同时降低了环境噪声并使佩戴者能够在嘈杂的环境中体验降低的噪声通信。因此，所提议的系统为消费者提供了电子增强声学体验的潜力，允许有选择地降低环境噪声，同时保持所需的外部噪声可听。实验研究表明，所提出的空间选择性 ANC 耳机在视线方向上提供了听通能力，同时降低了环境噪声并使佩戴者能够在嘈杂的环境中体验降低的噪声通信。因此，所提出的系统为消费者提供了电子增强声学体验的潜力，允许有选择地降低环境噪声，同时保持所需的外部噪声。实验研究表明，所提出的空间选择性 ANC 耳机在视线方向提供了听通能力，同时降低了环境噪声并使佩戴者能够在嘈杂的环境中体验降低的噪声通信。因此，所提出的系统为消费者提供了电子增强声学体验的潜力，允许有选择地降低环境噪声，同时保持所需的外部噪声。