If microphone arrays instead of a single microphone are employed for sampling acoustic wavefields, signal processing of the sensor data can exploit the spatial diversity to better detect or extract desired source signals and to suppress unwanted interference. Beamforming represents a class of such multichannel signal processing algorithms and suggests a spatial filtering which points a beam of increased sensitivity to desired source locations while suppressing signals originating from all other locations. While beamforming techniques are also extensively used in other areas, e.g. in underwater acoustics, ultrasound diagnostics, and radio communications [1–3], the treatment is concentrating here on wideband acoustic signals in the audio frequency range.
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Kellermann, W. (2008). Beamforming for Speech and Audio Signals. In: Havelock, D., Kuwano, S., Vorländer, M. (eds) Handbook of Signal Processing in Acoustics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30441-0_35
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