Large vs small aperture microphone arrays: performance over a large focal area

Microphone arrays offer the potential of obtaining a high-quality speech signal from a remote talker in a noisy, multi-source environment. In many important applications, sources of interest may be located anywhere within a large focal area and thus it is desirable that an array´s performance be uniform over that area. In this paper, simulated and measured results are presented indicating the performances of representative small and large aperture arrays at various points in a large focal area. From these results, it is clear that uniformity over a large focal area is an advantage of large-aperture arrays