Ambisonic Decoding with Compressed Sensing for Wider Sweet Spots

Resolve Bottlenecks,
Find Innovative Solutions
Generate Solutions

Solution Overview

Problem

Ambisonic decoding technologies face challenges in accurately reconstructing complex sound fields with a large number of speakers, leading to spectral distortion and reduced sweet spots due to the under-determined nature of the linear equation used to derive speaker signals from ambisonic signals.

Innovation Solution

The implementation of compressed sensing techniques, combined with auditory masking and independent component analysis, to upscale lower-order ambisonics and increase sparsity, allowing for more accurate and efficient decoding of sound fields by optimizing speaker signals using L1-norm minimization and perceptual sparsity methods.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Measurement precision

If compressed sensing techniques with L1-norm minimization are applied to upscale lower-order ambisonics, then the sparsity of sound fields increases and decoding accuracy improves, but the computational complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvedecoding accuracyVSAvoidcomputational complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
Measurement precisionVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent changes the norm parameter from L2-norm to L1-norm in the minimization process. This parameter change enables sparsity promotion in the decoded speaker signals, allowing accurate reconstruction of sound fields with fewer speakers while maintaining computational tractability through convex optimization

Inventive Principle:
Principle #35Parameter changes

Solution Approach 2:

The patent segments the ambisonic decoding problem into two stages: first upscaling lower-order ambisonics to higher-order using compressed sensing, then decoding with L1-norm minimization. This segmentation allows each stage to be optimized independently, managing computational complexity while improving accuracy

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

2Reliability

If the number of speakers is increased to improve sound field reconstruction quality, then the sweet spot expands and spatial resolution improves, but the system complexity and power consumption increase

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvesound field reconstruction qualityVSAvoidnumber of speakers
Core Design Contradiction:
ReliabilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent extracts and removes inaudible spectral components from the ambisonic signals using auditory masking models. By eliminating these redundant components before decoding, the system achieves accurate sound field reconstruction with fewer speakers, reducing system complexity while maintaining quality

Inventive Principle:
Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent changes the approach from using more speakers to using sparsity-promoting L1-norm minimization. This parameter change in the optimization objective allows the system to achieve the same reconstruction quality with fewer active speakers by concentrating energy on the most important spatial components

Inventive Principle:
Principle #35Parameter changes

3Productivity

If auditory masking is applied to remove inaudible sounds, then the sparsity of sound fields increases and decoding efficiency improves, but the processing complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvedecoding efficiencyVSAvoidprocessing complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
ProductivityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent applies auditory masking and removes inaudible spectral components as a preliminary step before the main decoding process. This preliminary action reduces the dimensionality and complexity of the subsequent L1-norm minimization problem, improving overall decoding efficiency while the masking model itself uses standard psychoacoustic algorithms

Inventive Principle:
Principle #10Preliminary action

Data Source

PatentEP3090574B1Method and apparatus for improved ambisonic decoding
Publication Date: 2019.06.26 SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO LTD
  • EP3090574B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP3090574B1 patent drawingFigure 2
  • EP3090574B1 patent drawingFigure 3

AI summary

An embodiment of this disclosure provides an audio receiver. The audio receiver includes a memory configured to store an audio signal and processing circuitry coupled to the memory. The processing circuitry is configured to receive the audio signal. The audio signal comprises a plurality of ambisonic components. The processing circuitry is also configured to separate the audio signal into a plurality of independent subcomponents. Each of the independent subcomponents is from a different source. Each of the plurality of ambisonic components is split into the independent subcomponents. The processing circuitry is also configured to decode each of the independent subcomponents. The processing circuitry is also configured to combine each of the decoded independent subcomponents into a speaker signal.