Conventional active control of road noise inside a vehicle cabin generally uses a pure feedforward control system with the conventional filtered-x least mean square (FXLMS) algorithm. While it can yield satisfactory noise reduction when the reference signal is well correlated with the targeted noise, in practice, it is not always possible to obtain a reference signal that is highly coherent with a broadband response typically seen in road noise. To address this problem, an active noise control (ANC) system with a combined feedforward–feedback controller is proposed to improve the performance of attenuating road noise. To take full advantage of the feedforward control, a subband (SFXLMS) algorithm, which can achieve more noise attenuation over a broad frequency range, is used to replace the conventional FXLMS algorithm. Meanwhile, a feedback controller, based on internal model control (IMC) architecture, is introduced to reduce the road noise components that have strong response but are poorly correlated with the reference signals. The proposed combined feedforward–feedback ANC system has been demonstrated by a simulation model with six reference accelerometers, two control loudspeakers and one error microphone, using actual data measured from a test vehicle. Results show that the performance of the proposed combined controller is significantly better than using either a feedforward controller only or a feedback controller only, and is able to achieve about 4 dBA of overall sound pressure level reduction.

Powertrain noise is a major component of vehicle interior noise and thus has a significant effect on the overall sound quality. It is typically dominated by harmonics in the lower audible frequency range, which are directly related to the engine firing orders. In order to achieve a more comfortable environment and pleasing driving experience, an active noise control (ANC) applying advanced filtered-x least mean squares (FXLMS) algorithm is employed to reduce the vehicle interior noise by targeting these harmonics. The proposed ANC system is designed to control multiple orders of the engine noise response simultaneously. It is also uniquely formulated with a twin-FXLMS algorithm to prevent harmonic interference that often resulted in overshoot at some adjacent orders, especially at low engine speed range where the reference sinusoids are close together. In fact, the interference issue is one of the critical problems that previously plagued the use of the conventional FXLMS algorithm. The basic design of the twin-FXLMS algorithm splits the adaptive filter into two sets. This allows different sum of reference sinusoids to be fed into each adaptive filter in order to widen the frequency separation between two adjacent harmonics. Finally, the performances of proposed twin-FXLMS are validated by numerical simulations.

An enhanced multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) filtered-x least mean square (FXLMS) algorithm using improved virtual secondary path is proposed as the basis for an active noise control (ANC) system for treating vehicle powertrain noise. This new algorithm is developed to overcome the limitation caused by the frequency-dependent property of the standard FXLMS algorithm and to reduce the variation of convergence speed inherent in multiple-channel cases, in order to improve the overall performance of the control system. In this study, the convergence property of the proposed algorithm is analyzed in the frequency domain in order to yield a better understanding of the physical meaning of the virtual secondary path. In practice, because of the arrangement and sensitivities of the actuators (speakers), transducers (microphones), and physical environment, the magnitude response of the main secondary paths can be very different from each other. This difference will cause difficulty in the overall convergence of the algorithm, which will result in minimal attenuation at some of the channels. The proposed channel equalized (CE) virtual secondary path algorithm is designed to tackle this difficulty by equalizing the mean magnitude level of the main secondary paths and by adjusting other secondary paths correspondingly to keep the coupling effects among the control channels unchanged. The performance of the proposed algorithm is validated by analyzing a two-input two-output active powertrain noise control system.

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A multichannel active noise control (ANC) system has been developed for a vehicle appli cation, which employs loudspeakers to reduce the low-frequency road noise. Six acceler ometers were attached to the vehicle structure to provide the reference signal for the feedforward control strategy, and two loudspeakers and two microphones were applied to attenuate acoustic noise near the headrest of the driver's seat. To avoid large compu tational burden caused by the conventional time-domain filtered-x least mean square (FXLMS) algorithm, a time-frequency domain FXLMS (TF-FXLMS) algorithm is pro posed. The proposed algorithm calculates the gradient estimate and filtered reference signal in the frequency domain to reduce the computational requirement, while also updates the control signals in the time domain to avoid delay. A comprehensive computa tional complexity analysis is conducted to demonstrate that the proposed algorithm requires significantly lower computational cost as compared to the conventional FXLMS algorithm.