Bayesian selection of plane-wave decomposition models

Plane-wave decompositions, whereby a measured sound field is described as a superposition of plane waves, are central to many applications in acoustics and audio engineering. This letter applies a Bayesian probabilistic inference framework to the plane wave decomposition problem and examines the Deviance Information Criterion (DIC) for selecting the optimum number of waves in the decomposition. The framework learns the model directly from the data and, as such, adapts to the wavefield under study. The DIC is applied to data measured in two reverberant sound fields (highly-reverberant and lightly-damped) to determine the simplest models providing the preferred fit to the data.