Multiple Circular Arrays of Vector Sensors for Real-Time Sound Field Analysis

This article proposes multiple circular arrays of vector sensors for analyzing the three dimensional sound field. By exploiting the fact that a finite number of spatial basis functions can represent the sound field within a region, the designed arrays allow the analysis of the sound field around the arrays sequentially by either a frequency-domain method or a time-domain method. The arrays are compact and thus are suitable for integrating with small-sized devices. The time-domain method is of low latency and computationally simple, and thus are suitable for providing the devices with spatial acoustic features in real-time. The effectiveness of the proposed arrays and the sound field analysis methods are confirmed by simulations, and compared with another array.