Siemens PLM Software

Acoustic Holography
Content:
Which criteria are most important for accurate sound source localization?
What is near-field acoustic holography?
What are the advantages & disadvantages of using near-field acoustic holography?
How can the disadvantages be overcome?
How can near-field acoustic holography be combined with simulation techniques?
More information about near-field acoustic holography

Near-field acoustic holography: a modern sound source localization technique

Finding out the exact source of a sound is a tough challenge for any acoustics engineer. Since
the early 90s, a number of methods, based on microphone arrays, have matured and are used
throughout numerous industries. In general, the methods fall into three categories: near-field
acoustic holography, beamforming, and inverse methods. Depending on the test object, the
nature of the sound and the actual environment, engineers will have to select one method or
the other. What that means for the near-field acoustic holography (NAH) technique is described in more detail below.
Which criteria are most important for accurate sound source localization?
These are two important criteria to assess the validity of sound source localization methods:
Spatial resolution is the ability to separate 2 sound sources. This is usually expressed in centimeters. It represents the closest distance between two sources, where they still appear to separately and do not merge into a single source. The lower the spatial resolution, the better the
source localization.
Dynamic range expresses sound level differences in dB between real sound sources and their
surrounding mathematical artifacts inherent to the sound source localization techniques. The
higher the dynamic range, the better the source localization.

Figure 1: Spatial resolution (left) and Dynamic range (right).

Technical info by: Siemens.

Technical info | Acoustic holography

What is near-field acoustic holography?

Near-field acoustic holography, also called NAH, is a technique
where the microphone array is placed relatively close to the
sound source in the near field. It provides good results over
the entire frequency range. Near-field acoustic holography was
introduced in the mid-eighties, and industrialized in the midnineties. It has by now become a well-known technique.

The near field can be described as the area that is closer to the
sound source than one or two wavelengths of the highest
frequency. So if 3400Hz is the highest frequency of interest,
then the near field would be within 10-20cm of the sound
source.

Near-field acoustic holography measures sound pressure by

arranging several microphones in a rectangular planar array.
Microphones are regularly spaced both horizontally and
vertically. The sound pressure in the plane is then backpropagated to the actual surface of the object. The spacing
between the microphones determines the half-wavelength of the
maximum frequency, and the size of the array determines the
half-wavelength of the minimum frequency. The spacing also
determines the spatial resolution: a coarsely spaced array cannot
accurately localize sources on the fine mechanics of a small
object.

The process to propagate this measured pressure field in one

plane to another plane can be divided in 3 steps:

The first step is the transformation of the acoustical

pressure field on the array from the spatial domain to
the wave number domain by means of a Spatial
Fourier Transform.

The second step is back-propagation of the different

waves to the new defined plane, using the Dirachlet
Green function. In order to optimize the spatial
resolution so-called evanescent waves have to be
included. These are near-field standing waves that
occur only very closely to the sound source and decay
exponentially. If too few are included, the spatial
resolution is not optimal. Including too many
evanescent waves, blurring of the hologram can occur.
A special Wiener Filter is usually implemented in the
standard algorithm to define the optimal number of
evanescent waves.

Finally, the last step is transforming the acoustics

signal back from the wave number domain to the
spatial domain by means of an inverse Spatial Fourier
Transform.

Technical info by: Siemens.

The differences between various industrial implementations of

the original near-field acoustic holography formulation lie in
the exact implementation of the second step which is crucial to
obtain a good spatial resolution.

Near-field acoustic holography requires that the arrays

dimension matches the object size since it back-propagates
sounds perpendicularly to the arrays surface. The array
dimension in turn determines the number of required
microphones and measurement channels. The array width
depends on (1) the size of the object and (2) the minimum
frequency of interest. For objects that are too big to reasonably
match the size of an array, it is possible to use near-field
acoustic holography to perform measurements in different
patches, until the full surface of the object is covered. In that
case, the objects condition has to be stationary. If the condition
is not stationary, it should at least be a repeatable transient
condition, such as a run-up in function of rpm, or a repeatable
impulsive noise, such as a door slam. If the minimum frequency
of interest requires an array, which is far wider than the object,
near-field acoustic holography still allows using an array that is
of the same width as the test object. This yields correct source
localization, at the expense of less reliable source
quantification.

The spacing between microphones will be determined by (1) the

maximum frequency of interest and (2) the granularity of the
sound sources. If the maximum frequency is very high, the
spacing becomes very small. Microphones that are placed too
close to each other can cause interference in the respective
sound fields. The recommended relative position of
microphones should therefore not be less than 2.5cm. If the
granularity of the sound sources is small (i.e. all the small
components in a door lock), then the microphone spacing
should be adapted to this, even if this is not needed for the
maximum frequency. Too few points on the hologram do not let
accurately pinpoint which component is the sound source. In
both cases, the ideal number of microphones sometimes
outnumbers the availability of transducers and acquisition
hardware.

Technical info | Acoustic holography

Figure 2: Small air pump, air intake and air outlet

analyzed with NAH.

Figure 2 shows an example of a small 12cm wide air pump. The

hologram size is 27cm x 27cm, derived from 3cm spacing
resulting in a maximum frequency of 5700Hz. Based on critical
frequencies found in the spectrum, the various holograms
pictured below show the rotating pump itself (left, 1150Hz), the
air outlet (middle, 430Hz), and the air intake (right, 715Hz).
This example demonstrates that it is possible to propagate to
frequencies with a half-wavelength larger than the hologram
size, as is the case for the middle hologram (40cm). This
still allows correct localization at the expense of less reliable
quantification results. Besides that, with small structures, it is
important to take the granularity of possible sound sources into
account, and match microphone spacing accordingly. In this
case, the 3cm spacing matches the size of the different small
pump components.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using nearfield acoustic holography?
Near-field acoustic holography has following major advantages.

Spatial resolution is independent of frequency. It

equals the microphone spacing in the hologram.

Using the Dirachlet Green function allows

propagation from the measured pressure field to a
velocity field. This method supports sound intensity
calculations and, therefore, sound power for different
zones or components. This means that the sound
sources can not only be localized, but also quantified.

The near-field acoustic holography method is a very precise

engineering tool for source localization. However, it has some
disadvantages:

Near-field acoustic holography can only propagate to

a surface that is parallel to the measured surface. The
size of the propagated plane has to be identical to the
measured plane. To localize a source on a complete
vehicle, the measurement plane has to span the
complete vehicle. For stationary applications and
repeatable transient applications, such as slow engine
run-ups or door slams, the data can be acquired in
batches. As a result, it is possible to perform nearfield acoustic holography measurements with a 20 to
30-channel data acquisition system.

Technical info by: Siemens.

The spacing between the microphones is defined by

either the desired spatial resolution or the wavelength
of the highest frequency one wants to analyze. So an
increasing maximum frequency implies closer spaced
microphones. From a practical standpoint, near-field
acoustic holography is therefore limited to analyze
higher frequencies because of the large amount of data
that needs to be acquired. Also, at small microphone
spacings, the sound pressure as measured by one
microphone starts to get disturbed by the close
presence of its neighboring microphones in the sound
field.

How can the disadvantages be overcome?

As already indicated, for repeatable transients conditions, or
transient conditions that rely on the rotational speed of an
engine, near-field acoustic holography can measure in
different patches. The other main disadvantage can be
overcome by using a dedicated acoustic beamforming
technique called near-field focalization.

Near-field focalization is an acoustic beamforming

technique which is a far-field sound source localization
technique that uses measurements in the near field. The
same near-field acoustic holography measurement can
therefore be reprocessed with this technique. In the near
field, the sound waves do no longer arrive at the
microphone as planar waves, but as spherical waves. The
original beamforming back propagation can therefore be
reformulated to deal with these waves. For acoustic
beamforming and thus also near-field focalization, the
spatial resolution is not constant anymore over the entire
frequency range, but is proportional to the wavelength .
Near-field focalization improves that spatial resolution to
0.44 .

When compared to near-field acoustic holography, there is

no benefit of using focalization in the lower frequency
range. However, there is a break-even point at which the
spatial resolution of near-field acoustic holography is equal
to focalization. Above that frequency, focalization improves
spatial resolution. In fact, at the near-field acoustic
holography frequency limit, near-field focalization improves
spatial resolution by a factor of 2. Obtaining the same
accuracy with near-field acoustic holography would mean
that the spacing between the array microphones should be

Technical info | Acoustic holography

decreased by a factor 2. This translates to 4 times more

microphones and requires a larger number of transducers
and measurement channels, which increases hardware
investments and maintenance costs. Using near-field

focalization after the break-even point for near-field

acoustic holography data means improved results at a lower
cost.

Figure 3: Spatial resolution versus

frequency for different techniques
How can near-field acoustic holography be combined
with simulation techniques?
Inverse Numerical Acoustics (or INA) is a method which
reconstructs the surface normal velocities on a vibrating
structure from the sound measured in the near field around
the structure. This is of particular interest when the structure
is rotating or moving, too light or too hot to be instrumented
by accelerometers. The use of laser vibrometers is often of
no remedy due to the complex shape of the source. The
retrieved surface normal velocities can afterwards be used to
carry out source ranking for different panels of the structure
and to predict the pressure in the far field.

INA is a unique and hybrid solution as it combines

experimental sound pressure data in the near field, measured
by a microphone array for near-field acoustic holography,
with Acoustic Transfer Vectors (ATVs) obtained from
simulation: the technique is based on the inversion of
transfer relations, which are for example obtained from an
acoustic Boundary Element Model (BEM) formulation.
Typically only a limited set of microphone points are used
in the near field pressure measurements which means the
INA problem is usually underdetermined, resulting in a non
unique solution for the surface vibrations. Using Singular
Value Decomposition (SVD) with appropriate truncation,
the most physically meaningful solution can be extracted.

Figure 4: INA-computed volume velocities on the

left, measured on the right.
Summary
As a general rule, near-field techniques are preferred
solutions for sound source localization. When possible, they
provide the best results in terms of dynamic range and
spatial resolution. The combined near-field acoustic
holography and near-field focalization approach delivers
optimal results, as near-field acoustic holography is the

Technical info by: Siemens.

most suitable technique in the low and mid frequency

range, and near-field focalization most appropriate for
higher frequencies.
As seen, there are some cases where combined near-field
acoustic holography and near-field focalization is not

Technical info | Acoustic holography

practical: (1) it is not possible to measure in the near field,

(2) the array size becomes too big, or (3) it is not possible to
measure in patches due to rapidly changing operational
conditions. In these cases, an acoustic beamforming solution
will be chosen.

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Technical info by: Siemens.