Sound Field Reconstruction In Low-Frequency Room Acoustics: A Benchmark Study With Simulation

Sound field reconstruction is the experimental process of reconstructing the sound field distribution in an open or confined space. For room acoustics, sound field reconstruction consists of recovering the entire enclosed sound field in a room using various measurements. This characterization process requires a thorough knowledge of either the Room Frequency Response (RFR) or its time domain equivalent, Room Impulse Response (RIR). These quantities express the acoustic transmission characteristics between a source and a receiver in a room and hence are dependent on the positions of the sound source and receivers in the room. For a fixed source position, the reconstruction of sound field in a room requires measurements at multiple locations in the room. The challenge to this process is how to faithfully reconstruct the sound field using the least possible measurements. To this end, the problem of sound field reconstruction can be studied under the scope of a sampling problem.