Robust and Adaptive Feedback Noise Attenuation in Ducts

In this brief, the attenuation of sound propagation in an air-handling duct using robust and adaptive feedback active noise control (ANC) strategies is investigated. The case of multiple narrow-band disturbances located in distinct frequency regions and the interference occurring in the presence of disturbances with very close frequencies are considered. The active control uses a loudspeaker as a compensatory system. The objective is to minimize the residual noise at the end of the duct segment considered. The system does not use any additional sensors for receiving real-time information upon the disturbances. This brief illustrates the application of the techniques for active vibration control presented by Landau et al. to this problem. A hierarchical feedback control approach will be used. At the first level, a robust linear controller will be designed taking advantage of the knowledge of the domains of variation of the frequencies of the noise disturbances. To further improve the performance, a direct adaptive control algorithm will be added. Its design is based on the use of the internal model principle combined with the Youla-Kučera parameterization of the controller. Guidelines for the design of the baseline (central) controller are provided. Both robust and adaptive controls require the knowledge of the discrete-time model of the compensation path, which is obtained by identification from experimental data. Experimental results on a relevant duct ANC test bench will illustrate the performance of the proposed methodology.