Student Theses - Details

We encounter acoustic noise frequently in our everyday lifes, but passive hearing protection techniques are either not satisfactory or impracticable. In contrast, active noise cancellation (ANC) is especially suitable for reducing low frequency noise.

ANC can be used in a variety of applications, ranging from the reduction of industry noise or in-car applications to well-known ANC headphones.

Commercially available ANC headphones often apply a fixed-filter control strategy that is customized for a specific headphone. Advances in AD/DA converter technology, as well as the rising computational capabilities of DSPs allow for digital ANC system realizations and offer a large amount of flexibility.

Open topics in this area of research:

• Evaluation metrics for the assessment of ANC system performance
• Implementation of a real-time ANC system
• Modelling and Design of an electro-acoustic front-end for hearing aids and in-ear headphones using CAD/COMSOL
• Characterization of noise and headphones using acoustic measurements

The focus of the thesis is chosen in close consultation and according to the interests of the candidate.

It should be emphasized that all topics include the implementation of the algorithms in a real-time system, as well as verification through acoustic measurements. In particular, this offers the opportunity to get to know the conditions for real-time systems when developing algorithms and to test them under realistic conditions.