‫بسم هللا الرحمن الرحيم‬

Al-nour College of Science and Technology  

College of Communication

Active Noise Cancellation

By:
1-Monzir azhari
2-mohamed al khatim
3-Mazin hashim

SUPERVISOR
DR..MORTATA ABD-ALWAHAB

Introduction:-
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 In our increasingly mobile society, individuals are prone to doing just about
everything on the move. Listening to music is certainly not an exception. However,
when one listens to music away from the home, one necessarily has less control
over noise exposure. Airplane, bus and car engines are the most common noise
distractions as one travels. Lawnmower engines, others’ speech and music are
also frequently encountered.

Auditory pollution or noise is closely related to urban and the most advanced
places, especially industrial places for the expansion of the use of machinery and
means of modern technology, it is closely related to the progress and development
that man seeks day after day.

Sounds are an integral part of our daily life, and it is one of the characteristics
that distinguishes them. These voices have great advantages. They provide us
with pleasure and enjoyment through our listening to music or the voices of birds,
warning as you tell us that there is something wrong such as a malfunction in cars
but now and in modern societies voices have become a nuisance for us that we do
not want to hear.

Surely, there is considerable benefit in obtaining headphones that could

perform active noise cancellation – be able to filter out noise as one encounters it.

What it active noise cancellation:-

First, what is noise?

Noise is unwanted sound judged to be unpleasant, loud or disruptive

to hearing. From a physics standpoint, noise is indistinguishable from sound, as
both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arises
when the brain receives and perceives a sound.

Noise consists of unwanted waveforms that can interfere with communication.

Sound noise interferes with your normal hearing.

Second, what is cancellation?

Cancellation processes depend on simple principle adding two signals with

the same amplitude and opposite phase the result will be zero.
Noise cancellation is a method to reduce or completely cancel out undesirable
sound.

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 Active noise cancellation is a method for reducing unwanted sound by the
addition of a second sound specifically designed to cancel the first.

Active and passive noise control:-

Noise control is an active or passive means of reducing sound emissions,
often for personal comfort, environmental considerations or legal
compliance. Active noise control is sound reduction using a power
source. Passive noise control is sound reduction by noise-isolating materials such
as insulation, sound-absorbing tiles, or a muffler rather than a power source.

Active noise canceling is best suited for low frequencies. For higher
frequencies, the spacing requirements for free space and zone of silence
techniques become prohibitive. In acoustic cavity and duct based systems, the
number of nodes grows rapidly with increasing frequency, which quickly makes
active noise control techniques unmanageable. Passive treatments become more
effective at higher frequencies and often provide an adequate solution without the
need for active control.

Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) Method

Sound is a pressure wave, which consists of alternating periods
of compression and rarefaction. A noise-cancellation speaker emits a
sound wave with the same amplitude but with inverted phase (also known
as antiphase) to the original sound. The waves combine to form a new
wave, in a process called interference, and effectively cancel each other
.out – an effect which is called destructive interference

Fig. 1: Destructive Interference

Modern active noise control is generally achieved through the use of

analog circuits or digital signal processing. Adaptive algorithms are
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designed to analyze the waveform of the background noise, then based on
the specific algorithm generate a signal that will either phase shift or invert
the polarity of the original signal. This inverted signal (in antiphase) is then
amplified and a transducer creates a sound wave directly proportional to
the amplitude of the original waveform, creating destructive interference.
.This effectively reduces the volume of the perceivable noise

A noise-cancellation speaker may be co-located with the sound source to

be attenuated. In this case it must have the same audio power level as the
source of the unwanted sound. Alternatively, the transducer emitting the
cancellation signal may be located at the location where sound attenuation is
wanted (e.g. the user's ear). This requires a much lower power level for
cancellation but is effective only for a single user. Noise cancellation at other
locations is more difficult as the three-dimensional wave fronts of the unwanted
sound and the cancellation signal could match and create alternating zones of
constructive and destructive interference, reducing noise in some spots while
doubling noise in others. In small enclosed spaces (e.g. the passenger
compartment of a car) global noise reduction can be achieved via multiple
speakers and feedback microphones, and measurement of the modal
responses of the enclosure.

Fig. 2: Graphical depiction of active noise reduction

Algorithm
There are several algorithms used to calculate the “anti-noise” signal. The
Least Mean Square (LMS) algorithm is comprised of two processes – a filtering
process producing the output signal and the estimation error, and an adaptive
process responsible for the automatic adjustment of filter tap weights.

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 Fig. 3: Sample ANC flowchart with LMS

Code in MATLAB:-
%noise cancellation
clc;
clear all;
order=2;

size=2; %time duration of inputs

fs=8192; %digital sampling frequency
t=[0:1/fs:size];
N=fs*size; %size of inputs
f1=35/2; %frequency of voice
f2=99/2; %frequency of noise

voice = cos (2*pi*f1*t);

subplot (4,1,1)
plot (t,voice);
title ('voice (do not have access to)')

noise = cos(2*pi*f2*t.^2); %increasing frequency

noise
%noise=.1*rand(1,length(voice)); %white noise
primary= voice+noise;
subplot(4,1,2)
plot(t,primary)
title ('primary = voice + noise (input1)')

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ref =noise+.25*rand; %noisy noise
subplot(4,1,3)
plot(t,ref)
title('reference (noisy noise) (input2)');

w=zeros(order,1);
mu=.006;
for i=1:N-order
buffer = ref(i:i+order-1); %current 32
points of reference
desired(i) = primary(i)-buffer*w; %dot product
reference and coeffs
w=w+(buffer.*mu*desired(i)/norm(buffer))';%update coeffs
end

subplot (4,1,4)
plot (t(order+1:N),desired)
title ('Adaptive output (hopefully it is close to "voice")')

Fig. 4: Output in MATLAB

Application:-
It can be used in Noise-cancelling headphones which are headphones that
reduce unwanted ambient sounds using active noise control. This is distinct from

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 passive headphones which, if they reduce ambient sounds at all, use techniques
such as soundproofing.

To cancel the lower-frequency portions of the noise, noise-cancelling

headphones use active noise control. They incorporate a microphone that
measures ambient sound, generate a waveform that is the exact negative of the
ambient sound, and mix it with any audio signal the listener desires.

Drawbacks:-
1. Active noise control requires power, usually supplied by a USB port or a battery
that must occasionally be replaced or recharged.

2. Any battery and additional electronics may increase the size and weight of the
headphones compared to regular headphone.

3. The noise-cancelling circuitry may reduce audio quality and add high-frequency
hiss, though reducing the noise may result in higher perceived audio quality.

Conclusion:-
Noise cancellation makes it possible to listen to music without raising the
volume excessively. It can also help a passenger sleep in a noisy vehicle such as
an airliner.

In the aviation environment, noise-cancelling headphones increase the

signal-to-noise ratio significantly more than passive noise attenuating
headphones or no headphones, making hearing important information such as
safety announcements easier. Noise-cancelling headphones can improve listening
enough to completely offset the effect of a distracting concurrent activity.