Acoustic coupling in directional loudspeaker arrays

The performance of directional loudspeaker and microphone arrays is of interest with regard to conferencing applications. Transducer arrays can be steered to enhance transmission and or reception at a prescribed location. In reverberant environments, directional microphone arrays have shown promise in enhancing speech intelligibility in hand-free applications. Steerable loudspeaker arrays, on the other hand, have met with limited success. The differentiating feature is the input impedance of the loudspeaker. In this presentation the role of the acoustic coupling between adjacent transducers in a loudspeaker array will be examined. The acoustical interaction between transducer elements is modeled. The impact of this interaction on beamforming is examined.