PROCEEDINGS of the23rd International Congress on Acoustics
9 to 13 September 2019 in Aachen, Germany

Double tetrahedral intensity probes for reducing the spatial bias
error of source localization
In-Jee JUNG 1; Jeong-Guon IH 21, 2

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea

ABSTRACT
A compact tetrahedral probe used for measuring the three-dimensional acoustic intensity vector can be usedfor the source localization. Although such 3D intensimetry is advantageous in miniaturizing the sensing
system size, it has not been popularly used due to its large spectral and spatial bias errors, which areadditional to the bias errors at low and high frequency ranges. Compensation methods for spectral bias errors
are recently proposed, but the spatial bias error, which is related to the probe orientation, is not easy tocompensate. In this work, the idea is to adopt two probes together, thus effectively arranging the microphones
to reduce the spatial sparseness of sensors and the irregularity in directivity. The number of microphones isminimized by sharing 1 or 3 microphones in the double module probes, while permitting the calculation oftwo intensity vectors. Two different types of probe configurations are used: twisted double probes, doubletetrahedral probe symmetric to a face of the tetrahedron. A numerical simulation is conducted to compare theproposed probe systems with single probe. The result shows that the residual spatial bias error is less than
5.7° for 2.5<kd<4.1 range.
Keywords: 3D Acoustic intensimetry, Source localization, Double tetrahedral intensity probe

1. INTRODUCTION

A compact tetrahedral probe used for measuring the three-dimensional acoustic intensity vector canbe used for the source localization. Although such 3D intensimetry is advantageous in miniaturizing
the sensing system size compared to the other methods such as TDOA or beamforming, it has not been
popularly used due to its inherently large spectral and spatial bias errors, which are additional to thewell-known bias errors at low and high frequency ranges (1). Compensation methods for spectral bias
errors are recently proposed by using the frequency band averaging or the phase filtering of crosscorrelation functions (2). However, the spatial bias error, which is related to the probe orientation tothe source, is not easy to compensate. In this work, the idea is to adopt two tetrahedral probes
together, thus effectively arranging the microphones to reduce the spatial sparseness of sensors andthe irregularity in directivity.

2. ESTIMATION OF INTENSITY USING MICROPHONESThe one-dimensional active sound intensity can be estimated by calculating the cross-power
spectral density (CPSD) function between adjacent two microphones (3). Similarly, thethree-dimensional sound intensity can be estimated by adopting at least four microphones configuredin the orthogonal space. To this end, an acoustic intensity probe configured in a tetrahedral
microphone layout can be used, in which any set of two microphones keep the same spacing. The
intensity vector component calculated in the Cartesian coordinates can be expressed as (4)m-1 m

I a = ∑ ∑ α ij Im ( G ij )i=1 j=i+1( ρ0ω d ) ,(1)where Gij means CPSD between the measured pressure data at the i th and jth sensors, αij is thecoefficient of the Gij , d the spacing between adjacent microphones, ω the circular frequency, ρ 0 themedium density, m the number of microphones. The estimated azimuth and elevation angles denoting
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injee@kaist.ac.kr
J.G.Ih@kaist.ac.kr

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the source direction can be written as{−1=φ tan={I y (ω ) I x (ω )} , θ tan −1 I z (ω )}I x 2 (ω ) + I y 2 (ω ) .

(2)

The spectral bias error occurs due to the reflected wave, which can be compensated by the1/3-octave band averaging or adopting the CPSD filtering method. Also, the spatial sparseness of thesensors makes the non-uniform directivity index (DI) of the probe, which makes the spatial bias
error at the high range of Helmholtz number, kd, where k is the wavenumber. It is theoreticallypossible to compensate the spatial bias error by using the pre-calculated spatial error database for asingle probe, but the compensation is not easy in practical problems.

3. DOUBLE TETRAHEDRAL INTENSITY PROBE

In this study, two probes are adopted as one module, thus effectively arranging the microphones toreduce the spatial sparseness of sensors and the irregularity in directivity. To this end, two different
types of probe configurations are adopted: twisted double module, face-symmetric double module.
Figure 1 shows the shape of single and double-tetrahedral probe modules and estimated DI and thespatial bias error for kd=2.5. The number of microphones is minimized by sharing 1 or 3 microphones
in the double module probes, while permitting the calculation of two intensity vectors. One can findthat the DI variation of the double tetrahedral modules is less than 0.8 dB, which is smaller than thesingle module case that bears the variation less than 1.0 dB. In case of the single module, the spatiallyaveraged bias error is 4.1°, which is about two times larger than that of the double modules. Also, thespatial error variation of a single module is far larger than that of the double modules. One can figureout that the pattern of spatial bias error appears differently for each module, and the pattern isproportional to the gradient of DI as shown in Fig. 2. In Figures 1(e-f) and 2(b-c), the twisted and theface-symmetric double tetrahedral modules show that the error is maximum in the direction around zand y-axis. Although such spatially non-uniform error occurs in the pole region of the double modules,
one can find that the localization accuracy is better than the single module.
(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

Figure 1. The shape of the single and double-tetrahedron intensity probes and the estimated DI and DoA
error for kd=2.5: (a)(b)(c) DI of the probes, (d)(e)(f) the spatial bias error. (a)(d) Single-tetrahedronintensity module, (b)(e) twisted double module, (c)(f) face-symmetric double module.

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(a)(b)(c)

Figure 2. The gradient of DI of the single and double-tetrahedron intensity probes for kd=2.5: (a)single-tetrahedron intensity module, (b) twisted double module, (c) face-symmetric double module.

4. LOCALIZATION TEST

A numerical simulation is conducted to compare the localization performance of the proposed
double module probes and a single module probe. A band-limited white noise for 0.5-1.6 kHz with 20dB signal-to-noise ratio is used as the source signal, and the noise is incident from 543 directions,which are uniformly distributed in 3D space, on the acoustic center of each module. The spacing
between adjacent microphones is varied for 85-140 mm, that corresponds to 2.5<kd<4.1. Figure 3
shows the band-averaged spatial bias error of each module displayed in -π/2< φ <π/2 and -π/2<θ<π/2
for kd=2.5, 3.5, 4.1, respectively. The test result for kd<2.5 is omitted because the spatially averaged
(c)
(a)
(b)

(d)

(e)

(f)

(g)

(h)

(i)

Figure 3. A comparison of single and double tetrahedral intensity probes in localization error for 2.5<kd<4.1:(a)(b)(c) kd=2.5, (d)(e)(f) kd=3.5, (g)(h)(i) kd=4.1. (a)(d)(g) Single-tetrahedron intensity module, (b)(e)(h)twisted double module, (c)(f)(i) face-symmetric double module.

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bias error of a single module is less than 1.4° and it is not significantly different for single and doublemodules. One can find that the difference of the error between the modules becomes large for kd>2.5
as presented in Figure 3. At kd=4.1, the averaged spatial bias error of twisted double module andface-symmetric double module is 4.8°, 5.7°, respectively, which is far smaller than the single modulecase that bears the error as much as 10.7°. The gradient of the DI forms a spatial bias error pattern ofeach module. By considering the pattern of the double modules, the twisted double module hasrobustness in azimuth angle, and the face-symmetric module is robust to the elevation angle in thesource localization.

5. CONCLUSIONSThe spatial bias error in the 3D intensity vector measurement is compensated by using two types ofdouble tetrahedral probes. The double modules have a residual error in the pole region, however, thespatially averaged bias error is much smaller than of the single tetrahedral module so the double
module can conduct more accurate source localization in the high frequencies. The residual error in thedirection of arrival becomes less than 5.7° for 2.5<kd<4.1. The twisted and face-symmetric modules
are robust to the azimuth angle and elevation angle, respectively.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was partially supported by BK21-Plus Project, NRF grants (No. 2017R1A2B4007133
and 2016K2A9A2A12003779).

REFERENCES

1. Woo JH, Jung IJ, Cho SK, Ih JG. Precision enhancement in source localization using a double-module,
three-dimensional acoustic intensity probe. Appl Acoust. 2019;151(1):63-72.
2. Ih JG, Jung IJ, Woo JH. Source localization with three-dimensional sound intensity probe with highprecision. Proc Acoust Soc Am 141; 25-29 June 2017; Boston, USA 2017. p. 3587.
3. Fahy FJ. Measurement of acoustic intensity using the cross‐spectral density of two microphonesignals. J Acoust Soc Am. 1977;62(1):1057-1059.
4. Pascal JC, Li JF. A systematic method to obtain 3D finite-difference formulations for acoustic
intensity and other energy quantities. J Sound Vib. 2008;310(1):1093-1111.

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