Acoustic determination of impedance tube microphone locations

Abstract

Impedance tube methods allow for convenient, rapid characterization of the normal-incidence acoustic properties of materials and constructions. Many such methods rely on the determination of precise phase relationships between microphones sensing the sound field inside the impedance tube; knowledge of the location of these microphones is crucial to the accuracy of the measurement. Due to the large physical size of typical microphone diaphragms, physical measurements of the microphone positions (such as with a ruler or caliper) are inadequate and have a large uncertainty. This paper presents a method to determine the impedance tube microphone acoustic center locations from a broadband acoustic reflection coefficient measurement of a rigid termination. Utilizing the Bayesian inference framework, the estimation procedure provides information about microphone locations and uncertainties in the position estimates.