Abating Urban Noise Through a Holistic approach of noise monitoring, analytic and control (MAC)

The main research objective of this project is to combine different enabling technologies developed by ADSC, I2R, and NTU to continuously monitor, analyze, and perform active noise control on aircraft, rail, and road traffic noises affecting the liveable residential environment. With rapid urban development, the annoyance and dissatisfaction caused by excessive urban noise is familiar to almost all Singaporeans; the negative health impact is less well known but is nonetheless very significant. Our proposed approach to mitigate traffic noise coming into the residential houses through open window is by first creating a noise map from static and dynamic sound-capture devices(Thrust 1), and analyzing the different noise source characteristics and its impact on human annoyance (Thrust 2). Using this information and in-situ noise acquisition, a perceptual based active noise control with auditory masking system (Thrust 3) is proposed to mitigate traffic noise entering the residential houses through open windows. This proposed system is called the active acoustic shield with masking or abbreviated as A2SM.

Following is some of the recorded active acoustic shield performance with broadband noise and MRT noise.

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