Large vs small aperture microphone arrays: Performance over a large focal area

Microphone arrays offer the potential of obtaining a high-quality speech signal from a remote talker in a noisy, multi-source environment. In many important applications, sources of interest may be located anywhere within a large focal area and thus it is desirable that an array's performance be uniform over that area. In this paper, simulated and measured results are presented indicating the performances of representative small and large aperture arrays at various points in a large focal area. From these results, it is clears that uniformity over a large focal area is an advantage of large-aperture arrays.