Sound-field analysis by plane-wave decomposition using spherical microphone array

Directional sound-field information is becoming more important in sound-field analysis and auditorium acoustics, and, as a consequence, a variety of microphone arrays have recently been studied that provide such information. In particular, spherical microphone arrays have been proposed that provide three-dimensional information by decomposing the sound field into spherical harmonics. The theoretical formulation of the plane-wave decomposition and array performance analysis were also presented. In this paper, as a direct continuation of the recent work, a spherical microphone array configured around a rigid sphere is designed, analyzed using simulation, and then used experimentally to decompose the sound field in an anechoic chamber and an auditorium into waves. The array employs a maximum of 98 measurement positions around the sphere, and is used to compute spherical harmonics up to order 6. In the current paper we investigate the factors affecting the performance of plane-wave decomposition, showing that the direct sound and several reflections in an auditorium can be identified experimentally. This suggests that the microphone arrays studied here can be employed in various acoustic applications to identify the characteristics of reverberant sound fields.