High resolution imaging of acoustic reflections with spherical microphone arrays

This paper proposes a methodology for the accurate visualization of acoustic reflections in a room from acoustic measurements by a spherical microphone array. The goal is to provide insight on the relationship between architectural and acoustic features. This task requires high-resolution acoustic images. In this contribution, we achieve this goal by introducing two main modifications of existing approaches. At first, we adopt an explicit model that takes into account the scattering due to the rigid spherical surface where the microphone capsules are hosted. Then, we obtain an estimate of the acoustic power coming from a grid of directions using a spectral analysis approach based on the matching of array data covariance matrix. We conclude this manuscript by showing applications of the devised methodology in real world cases.