Application of Circular Microphone Array for Visualization of Noise Sources on Off-Highway Vehicles

In the automotive and off-highway industries, identification of noise sources is essential in lowering vehicle drive-by noise levels. Thanks to low cost acoustics sensors available nowadays, large amount of spatial sound data can be obtained simultaneously from a circular array of microphones in a very short period of time. Signal processing techniques are applied to identify the location of noise sources. Such techniques are useful for identifying various noise sources such as tire noise [1]. The study in this paper uses a circular microphone array to identify noise sources near the cooling system on a farm tractor.