ANALYSIS OF ALTERNATIVE METHODS FOR IMPULSE RESPONSE FUNCTIONS BASED ON SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO ENHANCEMENT AND COMPLETENESS OF SOURCE SIGNAL RECONSTRUCTION USING PASSIVE TIME REVERSAL

Noise reduction and signal separation are important functions of acoustic signal processing. This study presents a detailed analysis for designing an acoustic signal processing procedure based on the time-reversal method. For some applications, setting transducers to retransmit at source locations is impracticable. Modeling a wave propagation path between two points using impulse response function is one way to overcome this limitation. This paper introduces alternative methods to calculate impulse response function, including an adaptive digital filter, deconvolution with singular value decomposition and Tikhonov regularization, and correlation. A discussion is also provided on the applicable frequency range and anti-noise ability of the impulse response functions obtained by all three techniques through simulation, and subsequently applies them to the designed time reversal process to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and restore source signals through experimentation. The conclusions of this study are given based on the level of accuracy using the SNR and correlation coefficient as indicators, and the computation time required by alternative methods is also an important factor to be discussed for real-time system design. Results prove that the proposed passive time reversal process is capable of enhancing the SNR and restoring the source signal. The alternative methods of calculating the impulse response function offer various advantages, and should be selected according to the application. If the time-cost is the first consideration and there is no dominant noise source, then correlation is the best choice for calculating impulse response function. If completeness of the reconstructed signal is the key point, the optimal deconvolution process is appropriate. If noise reduction is the highest priority in extracting a useful signal from noisy environments while ensuring acceptable restoration capability and computation time, an adaptive digital filter is suitable.