Information Measures for Microphone Arrays

TL;DR

This paper introduces an information-theoretic framework for assessing microphone arrays based on physics and geometry, using an analogy with wireless communication channels to quantify their information capacity.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach that evaluates microphone arrays through information measures derived from their physical and geometric properties, independent of specific beamforming algorithms.

Findings

Provides upper bounds on information rate of microphone arrays

Establishes an analogy between acoustic and wireless MIMO channels

Offers a new evaluation metric for microphone array performance

Abstract

We propose a novel information-theoretic approach for evaluating microphone arrays that relies on the array physics and geometry rather than the underlying beamforming algorithm. The analogy between Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) wireless communication channel and the acoustic channel of microphone arrays is exploited to define information measures of microphone arrays, which provide upper bounds of the information rate of the microphone array system.