Cascade biquad controller design for feedforward active noise control headphones considering incident noise from multiple directions

Active noise control headphones have become one of the most popular wearable personal devices currently. In this paper, the feedforward controller design problem using cascade biquad filters is addressed with respect to multiple incident directions of the primary noise. Criterion functions evaluating the comprehensive noise reduction performance are given, and the optimization methods for both single-channel and multi-channel controllers are proposed where Differential Evolution algorithm is used to find the global minimum. Experiments based on a commercial headphone are carried out and the results have validated the proposed methods. It has been shown that the comprehensive performance under multiple directions would be significantly improved when multiple reference microphones are used along with a multi-channel control strategy. (C) 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Automated summary

This paper addresses the feedforward controller design problem using cascade biquad filters for active noise control headphones, and proposes criterion functions for evaluating comprehensive noise reduction performance. Experimental results show that the comprehensive performance under multiple directions can be significantly improved when multiple reference microphones are used along with a multi-channel control strategy.