Hybrid active noise barrier with sound masking

In this paper, a hybrid active noise barrier (ANB) with sound masking capability is considered. To protect the speech privacy, several sound masking techniques have been developed. However, these sound masking techniques based on the superposition of the masker and original sound will lead to increase in the loudness of the sound after masking. Against this problem, this paper proposes a soundproof system which combines an ANB with a sound masking system. The ANB applies a new type of hybrid active noise control (ANC) system, which can reduce the noise diffraction and the noise propagated to the ear positions of the people behind the ANB simultaneously, to attenuate the conversation sound. Consequently, the required volume of the masker sound will decrease because of the smaller loudness of the original conversation sound in the control area. The sound masking system applies a method which can generate masker based on the frequency properties of the original sound. Several simulations are carried out to investigate the sound attenuation and sound masking performance of this system, and the results show that comparing with the traditional sound masking system, the proposed system needs smaller masker sound to achieve the sound masking effect.