Reconstruction of sound source pressures in an enclosure using the phased beam tracing method

Source identification in an enclosure is not an easy task due to complicated wave interference and wall reflections, in particular, at mid-high frequencies. In this study, a phased beam tracing method was applied to the reconstruction of source pressures inside an enclosure at medium frequencies. First, surfaces of an extended source are divided into reasonably small segments. From each source segment, one beam is projected into the field and all emitted beams are traced. Radiated beams from the source reach array sensors after traveling various paths including the wall reflections. Collecting all the pressure histories at the field points, source-observer relations can be constructed in a matrix-vector form for each frequency. By multiplying the measured field data with the pseudo-inverse of the calculated transfer function, one obtains the distribution of source pressure. An omni-directional sphere and a cubic source in a rectangular enclosure were taken as examples in the simulation tests. A reconstruction error was investigated by Monte Carlo simulation in terms of field point locations. When the source information was reconstructed by the present method, it was shown that the sound power of the source in an enclosure could be estimated.