Wave Field Reconstruction Filtering in Cylindrical Harmonic Domain for With-Height Recording and Reproduction

For sound field reproduction that includes height (with-height reproduction), it is more efficient to record and reproduce the sound field with lower resolution in elevation than in azimuth due to the spatial abilities of human auditory perception. We propose a sound field reproduction method using horizontally arranged cylindrical arrays of microphones and loudspeakers, which is based on the wave field reconstruction (WFR) filter. With the use of cylindrical array configurations, it is possible to reproduce sound waves arriving from upper and lower directions with a smaller number of array elements at angular positions. The WFR filter is analytically derived in the cylindrical harmonic domain and allows direct transformation from the received signals of the microphones into the driving signals of the loudspeakers. A model in which microphones are mounted on a rigid cylindrical baffle is introduced to stabilize the WFR filter. Numerical simulation results indicated that the reproduction accuracy in the neighboring region along the central axis of the cylindrical array was better preserved when using the proposed method than when the method with planar arrays was used.