Microphone Array Beamformer Project Description

I am designing and building a microphone array to model techniques used to reduce interference and noise in wireless communication systems. To understand how such problems arise, what an array is, and how it can be used to address current issues in wireless communication, consider the case of cell phone service providers. The number of cell phone users has increased dramatically over the last few years. As the user distribution becomes denser relative to the placement of cell phone towers (Fig. 1), the likelihood of cell phone service interruption (e.g., dropped calls or static noise) increases for a number of reasons. First, the number of users a cell phone towers can support is limited by processing capability and bandwidth. In other words, not only is cell phone tower performance limited by time (i.e., the amount of time it takes for the cell phone tower to process cell phone signals) but also by the amount of the electromagnetic spectrum allotted to them (Fig. 2). A simple remedy to these problems is to increase the number of cell phone towers. But such a decision would be costly, and would not permanentely address the core issues involved. I am working on a system that will solve the problem for a much longer period of time by exploiting a resource that most American cell phone providers do not use: space.