CNS Core: Small: NNC: Networked Noise Cancellation

CNS 核心：小型：NNC：网络降噪

• 批准号: 1910933
• 负责人: Romit Roy Choudhury
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-10-01 至 2023-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1910933&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CNS; Core; Small; NNC; Networked

Noise is everywhere, from people talking in offices to the never-ending traffic jams and airport announcements. Current noise canceling technology comes in the form of headphones and earbuds, which emit an anti-noise signal to counteract the external sounds. The time available for the headphones to compute this anti-noise is extremely short. This results in some noise getting through, which is why all these devices must cover the entire ear with noise-absorbing material. However, wearing such ear-blocking devices for long periods of time is not comfortable, and can even be harmful to health. This proposal aims to design a new noise-canceling architecture that does not block the ear canal. The vision is a behind-the-ear device that achieves noise cancellation as good as the best headphones or earbuds available today. The main idea behind this research involves combining wireless Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks with noise cancellation. Briefly, a microphone is placed in the environment that senses sounds and forwards them over wireless signals to an earpiece. Since wireless signals travel a million times faster than sound, the earpiece can receive the sound information in advance of the actual sound itself. Similar to lightning and thunder -- where the lightning arrives much before the thunder, hence allowing people to prepare for the loud rumble -- the proposed ear device gets the sound in advance and has much more time to produce a better anti-noise signal for human ears. Such technology has the potential to change the future of "earable" devices so that people can wear them continuously and enjoy much better control on what they hear. The implications on health are also crucial since noise pollution is becoming one of the major health concerns, especially in urban areas in developing regions.The core research contributions emerge from re-visiting classical ideas in noise cancellation with a networking and IoT lens. The proposal intends to demonstrate that new architectures are possible that not only allow additional time for acoustic signal processing, but also allow for non-causal filtering, crucial to better noise cancellation. Finally, the proposal also shows how lookahead in the sound enables filter caching and pre-loading, necessary to cancel fast changing sounds (like human conversations). Building on these foundations, the proposal is also keen on extending the ideas to device-free noise cancellation -- that is, the idea that noise can be (partially) cancelled at the ear without the need of a wearable ear-device.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

噪音无处不在，从办公室里人们的谈话声到永无休止的交通拥堵和机场广播。当前的降噪技术以耳机和耳塞的形式出现，它们发出抗噪声信号来抵消外部声音。耳机计算抗噪声的可用时间非常短。这会导致一些噪音通过，这就是为什么所有这些设备都必须用噪音吸收材料覆盖整个耳朵。然而，长时间佩戴这种堵耳器并不舒服，甚至有害健康。该提案旨在设计一种不会阻塞耳道的新型降噪架构。该愿景是一种耳后式设备，可实现与当今最好的耳机或耳塞一样好的降噪效果。这项研究背后的主要思想是将无线物联网 (IoT) 网络与噪声消除相结合。简而言之，麦克风被放置在感知声音的环境中，并通过无线信号将声音转发到耳机。由于无线信号的传播速度比声音快一百万倍，因此耳机可以在实际声音本身之前接收到声音信息。与闪电和雷声类似，闪电比雷声更早到达，因此可以让人们为响亮的隆隆声做好准备，所提出的耳机可以提前获取声音，并且有更多的时间来产生更好的抗噪声信号。人类的耳朵。此类技术有可能改变“耳戴式”设备的未来，使人们可以连续佩戴它们并更好地控制他们所听到的内容。对健康的影响也至关重要，因为噪声污染正在成为主要的健康问题之一，尤其是在发展中地区的城市地区。核心研究贡献来自于通过网络和物联网镜头重新审视噪声消除的经典思想。该提案旨在证明新的架构是可能的，不仅可以为声学信号处理提供额外的时间，而且还可以进行非因果滤波，这对于更好地消除噪声至关重要。最后，该提案还展示了声音中的前瞻如何实现过滤器缓存和预加载，这是消除快速变化的声音（如人类对话）所必需的。在此基础上，该提案还热衷于将这些想法扩展到无设备噪声消除，即无需可穿戴耳设备即可（部分）在耳朵处消除噪声的想法。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。