Abstract

In sound field control, a set of control sources is used to match the pressure field generated by noise sources but with opposite phase to reduce the total sound pressure level in a defined area commonly referred to as dark zone. This is usually an ill-posed problem. The approach presented here employs a subspace iterative method where the number of iterations acts as the regularization parameter and controls unwanted side radiation, i.e. side lobes. More iterations lead to less regularization and more side lobes. The number of iterations is controlled by problem-specific stopping criteria. Simulations show the increase of lobing with increased number of iterations. The solutions are analysed through projections on the basis provided by the source strength modes corresponding to the right singular vector of the transfer function matrix. These projections show how higher order pressure modes (left singular vectors) become dominant with larger number of iterations. Furthermore, an active-set type method provides the constraints on the amplitude of the solution which is not possible with the conjugate gradient least square algorithm alone.