Acoustics deals with the production, control, transmission, reception, and effects of sound. Owing to acoustics being an interdisciplinary field, this book is intended to be equally accessible to readers from a range of backgrounds including electrical engineering, physics and mechanical engineering. This book introduces the fundamentals of acoustic wave motion. It addresses in a clear and systematic way some of the most difficult parts of acoustics for beginners, such as the widely different approximations due to the wide frequency range, the apparently arbitrary choice between the use of analytical solutions to the wave equation with boundary conditions, and the fundamentally different energy-based considerations used in noise control. As a result, it provides readers with a self-contained source of information on acoustics which can be used for self-study or as a graduate course text. Key features: Places an emphasis on detailed derivations based on the fundamental laws of physics and interpretations of the resulting formulas. Avoids, where possible, electrical and mechanical equivalent circuits, so as to make it accessible to readers with different backgrounds. Introduces duct acoustics, sound in enclosures, and sound radiation and scattering. Contains a set of appendices which includes material on signal analysis and processing as these tools are essential for the modern acoustician.

Acoustics is a mature field which enjoys a never ending youth. New developments are induced by either the search for a better understanding, or by technological innovations. Micro-fabrication techniques introduced a whole new class of micro devices, which exploit acoustic waves for various tasks, and in particular for information processing and for sensing purposes. Performance improvements are achievable by better modelling tools, able to deal with more complex configurations, and by more refined techniques of fabrication and of integration in technological systems, like wireless communications. Acoustics introduces the fundamentals of acoustic wave motion. It addresses in clear and systematic way some of the most difficult parts of acoustics for beginners. It provides readers with a self-contained source of informations on acoustics from highly regarded resources. This book deals with the production, control, transmission, reception and effects of sound. Owing to acoustics being an interdisciplinary field, this book is intended to be equally accessible to readers from a range of backgrounds including electrical engineering, physics and mechanical engineering.

The classic acoustics reference! This widely-used book offers a clear treatment of the fundamental principles underlying the generation, transmission, and reception of acoustic waves and their application to numerous fields. The authors analyze the various types of vibration of solid bodies and the propagation of sound waves through fluid media.

Providing a wealth of information on fundamental topics in the areas of linear air and underwater acoustics, as well as space-time signal processing, this book provides real-world design and analysis equations. As a consequence of the interdisciplinary nature of air and underwater acoustics, the book is divided into two parts: Acoustic Field Theory and Space-Time Signal Processing. It covers the fundamentals of acoustic wave propagation as well as the fundamentals of aperture theory, array theory, and signal processing. Starting with principles and using a consistent, mainly standard notation, this book develops, in detail, basic results that are useful in a variety of air and underwater acoustic applications. Numerous figures, examples, and problems are included.

Research and scientific progress are based upqn intuition coordinated with a wide theoretical knowledge, experimental skill, and a realistic sense of the limitations of technology. Only a deep insight into physical phenomena will supply the necessary skills to handle the problems that arise in acoustics. The acoustician today needs to be well acquainted with mathematics, dynamics, hydrodynamics, and physics; he also needs a good knowledge of statistics, signal processing, electrical theory, and of many other specialized subjects. Acquiring this background is a laborious task and would require the study of many different books. It is the goal of this volume to present this background in as thorough and readable a manner as possible so that the reader may turn to specialized publications or chapters of other books for further information without having to start at the preliminaries. In trying to accomplish this goal, mathematics serves only as a tool; the better our understanding of a physical phenomenon, the less mathematics is needed and the shorter and more concise are our computa tions. A word about the choice of subjects for this volume will be helpful to the reader. Even scientists of high standing are frequently not acquainted with the fundamentals needed in the field of acoustics. Chapters I to IX are devoted to these fundamentals. After studying Chapter I, which dis cusses the units and their relationships, the reader should have no difficulty converting from one system of units to any other.

This book presents the signal processing algorithms that have been developed to process the signals acquired by a spherical microphone array. Spherical microphone arrays can be used to capture the sound field in three dimensions and have received significant interest from researchers and audio engineers. Algorithms for spherical array processing are different to corresponding algorithms already known in the literature of linear and planar arrays because the spherical geometry can be exploited to great beneficial effect. The authors aim to advance the field of spherical array processing by helping those new to the field to study it efficiently and from a single source, as well as by offering a way for more experienced researchers and engineers to consolidate their understanding, adding either or both of breadth and depth. The level of the presentation corresponds to graduate studies at MSc and PhD level. This book begins with a presentation of some of the essential mathematical and physical theory relevant to spherical microphone arrays, and of an acoustic impulse response simulation method, which can be used to comprehensively evaluate spherical array processing algorithms in reverberant environments. The chapter on acoustic parameter estimation describes the way in which useful descriptions of acoustic scenes can be parameterized, and the signal processing algorithms that can be used to estimate the parameter values using spherical microphone arrays. Subsequent chapters exploit these parameters including in particular measures of direction-of-arrival and of diffuseness of a sound field. The array processing algorithms are then classified into two main classes, each described in a separate chapter. These are signal-dependent and signal-independent beamforming algorithms. Although signal-dependent beamforming algorithms are in theory able to provide better performance compared to the signal-independent algorithms, they are currently rarely used in practice. The main reason for this is that the statistical information required by these algorithms is difficult to estimate. In a subsequent chapter it is shown how the estimated acoustic parameters can be used in the design of signal-dependent beamforming algorithms. This final step closes, at least in part, the gap between theory and practice.