Passive acoustic measurements of wind velocity and sound speed in air
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Updated: Apr 23, 2026

Measurements of Waves in a Wind-wave Tank Under Steady and Time-varying Wind Forcing
Published on: February 13, 2018
Oleg A Godin1, Vladimir G Irisov2, Mikhail I Charnotskii2
1Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309 Oleg.Godin@noaa.gov.
Abstract:
Random acoustic fields generated by uncorrelated sources in moving media contain information about the propagation environment, including sound speed and flow velocity. This information can be recovered by noise interferometry. Here interferometric techniques are applied to road traffic noise. Acoustic travel times and their nonreciprocity are retrieved from two-point cross-correlation functions of noise. The feasibility of passive acoustic measurements of wind velocity using diffuse noise is experimentally demonstrated for the first time. The accuracy of the interferometric measurements of sound speed and wind velocity is confirmed by comparison with in situ measurements of wind, air temperature, and humidity.
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