Optimum Design of Thinned Microphone Arrays Using a Modified Perturbation Approach

A modified perturbation method is proposed to optimize the beam pattern of thinned microphone arrays. Both microphone spacing and array weight are iteratively adjusted via successive perturbation to achieve an optimum beam pattern in a Dolph Chebyshev sense. To improve the sidelobe performance, an alternative perturbation with respect to microphone spacing and array weight is implemented. Also, a linear space-tapering is employed in the perturbation process. It is demonstrated that the proposed approaches successfully yield sidelobe performances comparable to that of a normal array. Computer simulation results are presented.