A study of sound intensity control for active noise barriers

Active noise control systems have been applied to increase the insertion loss of noise barriers where the squared sound pressure or the total acoustic energy density is used as the cost function in previous works. The absolute value of the mean active sound intensity is chosen as the cost function to obtain extra sound insertion loss in the dark area of a hybrid active noise barrier system in this note. The strategy of minimizing the near-field sound intensity at discrete locations along the edge of the passive barrier is shown to be able to provide better far-field noise reduction than that of minimizing the squared sound pressure control. Both numerical simulations and off-line experiments are carried out with a three-channel demonstration system, where the locations of the secondary sources and the error sensors are optimized and comparisons are made between the extra sound pressure attenuation of the sound intensity control and that of the squared sound pressure control.