2020 >
Demystifying Beamformers
Paul Beckmann - Watch Now - Duration: 47:44
Lately there has been a resurgence of interest in beamformers following the success of the Amazon Echo. This talk presents beamformers in a simple-to-understand and straightforward light. You'll understand how the number of microphones and geometry impacts performance. The importance of microphone matching and SNR, and even how to create steerable arrays. The talk has a minimum of math and an emphasis on practical applications. Although the focus is on audio, the techniques presented extend to other applications such as RF.
Thanks for the presentation. completely new topic for me but I got the basic ideas, thanks for that. Do you have challenges when you add/sub the 2 micro phone signals because of the mismatches in the microphones, and do you do something special to mitigate them ?
You need matched microphones in order for a beamformer to work well. We recommend that they match +/- 1 dB. See slides 63 to 65 of my presentation for details and actual performance numbers.
Really enjoyed the presentation and learned a lot.
Thank you!
What an enjoyable presentation. I think you did a great job of showing a simple example of the microphones separated in space, and one signal delayed by one sample. It gave me a solid intuition as to how beamforming works. It set the tone for the rest of the presentation. Thank you so much.
very informative! certainly demystifyed beamformers for me. Thank you, paul!
Very, very interesting presentation, nice demos
Thanks Christophe! Putting the presentation together helped me crystalize a lot of ideas.
Welcome everyone and thanks for attending my presentation. I'll be monitoring the chat window for any questions you may have.
Regarding gain-matching of mics - can you correct the individual mic response curves to a common response level using measured response data for each mic before applying the beamformer?