# Acoustic Impulse Responses for Wearable Audio Devices

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive dataset of over 8000 acoustic impulse responses from wearable microphones, enabling evaluation of audio systems and demonstrating the advantages of body-spread microphone arrays.

## Contribution

It provides a large open-access dataset of wearable acoustic impulse responses and analyzes the acoustic transfer functions across different body locations and conditions.

## Key findings

- Body-spread microphone arrays outperform single-device arrays.
- Clothing affects microphone transfer functions.
- Simulated beamformers improve noise reduction.

## Abstract

We present an open-access dataset of over 8000 acoustic impulse from 160 microphones spread across the body and affixed to wearable accessories. The data can be used to evaluate audio capture and array processing systems using wearable devices such as hearing aids, headphones, eyeglasses, jewelry, and clothing. We analyze the acoustic transfer functions of different parts of the body, measure the effects of clothing worn over microphones, compare measurements from a live human subject to those from a mannequin, and simulate the noise-reduction performance of several beamformers. The results suggest that arrays of microphones spread across the body are more effective than those confined to a single device.