Robust personal audio reproduction based on acoustic transfer function modelling

Personal audio systems generate a local sound field for a listener while attenuating the sound energy at pre-defined quiet zones. Their performance can be sensitive to errors in the acoustic transfer functions between the sources and the zones. In this paper, we model the acoustic transfer functions as a superposition of multipoles with a term to describe errors in the actual gain and phase. We then propose a design framework for robust reproduction, incorporating additional prior knowledge about the error distribution where available. We combine acoustic contrast control with worst-case and probability-model optimization, exploiting limited knowledge of the error distribution. Monte-Carlo simulations over 10000 test cases show that the method increases system robustness when errors are present in the assumed transfer functions.