Radu Balan receives NSF grant for optimizing sensor arrays

ISR-affiliated Professor Radu Balan (Math) is the principal investigator on a six-month, $50K NSF I-Corps grant, Optimizing Sensor Arrays for Waveform Enhancement.

The proposed system consists of an optimized large scale microphone array that allows spatial audio selection. This system can focus in on a target source while suppressing interferences from a wide variety of locations. In other words, the proposed system allows users to listen in on selected target source even though the source may be surrounded by a host of other interfering sources. The proposed technology achieves significant gains over current microphone array implementations through joint optimization of microphone placement and design.

The proposed technology can process acoustic and electromagnetic waveforms to discover both the number and location of sources in multi-path, noisy environments. The technology separates each source by either cancelling or attenuating interferences and identifies previously recognized sources. Additionally the technology works in environments where sources both move and outnumber the number of sensors. The technology optimizes sensor placement and processing using state of the art optimization and statistical modeling techniques.

Published May 1, 2014