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When combining waves of the same frequency, they can be manipulated in a way that they either combine constructively or destructively. Beamforming makes use of this principle in the spatial and temporal domains. On the receiver side by having multiple spatial samples of waves, a beamformer can enhance or cancel a wave coming from a certain direction. Similar on the transmitter side, multiple spatial transmitters can transmit waves so that the radiation pattern is coherent or destructive in desired direction.
Beamforming is a ubiquitous technology when it comes to wave propagation. It does not matter if the wave is light, acoustic, seismic, or ultrasonic, etc., beamforming can be applied. Because of the wide range of applications of beamforming, there exist multiple design criteria for beampatterns. They include creating a beampattern that matches a desired beampattern, having a minimum beamwidth for a certain sidelobe level or null steering.
The solution to these different beampattern designs is almost as numerous as the number of applications of beamforming. Some examples are:
To choose an appropriate beamforming solution, one must first asked several questions:
The answers to these questions will provide knowledge to what type of beamforming your application requires.
To learn more about various applications of beamforming, check out the following links:
In distributed multimedia systems such as a videoconferencing system, the sampling device for the camera and microphone is separate from the one distributing audio to the loudspeakers. Beamforming has become an essential technique when used with acoustic echo cancellation to provide enhanced voice quality in videoconferencing systems. When conferencing with remote participants, it is important that discussions be as clear and intelligible as possible to reduce misunderstandings and facilitate more efficient meetings.
A beamformer can be used to enhance or cancel a sound coming from a certain direction in an office or conference room. Beamforming with an array of microphones is used to capture a meeting participant’s speech and reject the signal from other speakers and background noise in the room. In addition, multichannel operation is available with these systems so that multiple speaker streams can be staged for diarization to allow non-participants to follow and interact with the meeting discussions as they transpired.
Acoustic echo cancellation and noise reduction techniques are used with beamforming for improved voice quality enhancement. VOCAL has developed a broad range of acoustic beamforming software solutions to address the challenges of voice capture in videoconferencing and other distributed multimedia systems.
Speech recognition is used in many man machine (MMI) interfaces including automated phone systems and robotics. The spectral characteristics of the speaker’s voice are important for these algorithms to recognize and interpret the spoken words. With robotics, the speaker may be attempting to communicate with the speech recognition system in dynamic and often noisy environments. In these situations, beamforming is an essential technique for microphone noise reduction and speech enhancement to capture spectral characteristics in the voice signal.
A beamformer enhances sound quality in a desired direction by adaptively cancelling sound coming from other directions. To achieve this, an array of microphones creates a beampattern with unity gain in the direction of the speaker while rejecting signal from elsewhere in the environment.
For active noise control, beamforming is used with acoustic echo cancellation and noise reduction to enhance the quality of the received voice signal while maintaining the spectral characteristics. VOCAL has developed a broad range of acoustic beamforming software solutions to improve speech enhancement and speech recognition performance in challenging environments.
Acoustic Beamforming Software FeaturesHome control, security, and patient care systems use voice communications systems which rely on hands-free devices and use beamforming to facilitate time-critical and emergency communications with individuals in a remote location or even another room in the same facility.
Most likely the near-end speaker will be elsewhere in the room away from the hands-free unit and, for the near- and far-end speakers to be heard, the gain on both the loudspeaker and microphone will be set high. Unfortunately this creates a particularly harsh environment where the acoustic coupling will be strong with nonlinear echoes present. In this situations, a beamformer can be used to enhance sound quality by adaptively cancelling a sound coming from certain directions in the room. Beamforming uses a microphone array to focus sound capture in the direction of the near-end speaker and reject the signal from other areas in the room.
Beamforming is used with acoustic echo cancellation and noise reduction techniques for improved voice quality enhancement, especially when communicating with an elderly or injured patient. VOCAL has developed a broad range of acoustic beamforming software solutions to address the challenges of voice communications in home control, security, and patient care systems.
Drive thru systems are used by many businesses such as fast food restaurants and banks to provide an additional level of service and convenience for customer transactions. Despite their notoriety for loud static and poor sound quality, these systems are expected to provide users clear and intelligible speech in environments with significant echo and background noise. Beamforming has become an essential technique to enhance voice quality for both the customer (near-end speaker) and attendant (far-end speaker) to minimize ordering errors and provide the best customer service.
In these situations, a beamformer can be used to enhance sound quality by adaptively cancelling a sound coming from certain directions. Beamforming uses an array of microphones to focus and capture the customer’s speech and reject the background noise from the customer’s vehicle and other sources.
Acoustic echo cancellation and noise reduction techniques are used with beamforming for improved voice quality enhancement. Depending on the system configuration and requirements of the environment, VOCAL has developed a broad range of acoustic beamforming software solutions to address the challenges of customer drive thru systems.