The project targets the design of a system that extends auditory communication beyond natural human hearing capacities by combining distributed sensing and distributed signal processing algorithmic components with advanced ad hoc mobility aware wireless communication. The system operates in a signal enhancement and noise reduction context, where for each participant the desired signals from different remote locations have to be enhanced while undesired signals have to be suppressed. This requires noise reduction techniques where multiple microphone signals obtained from different nodes are optimally combined to generate an enhanced signal.
Since the nodes will not have a fixed location they effectively form a dynamic large-­‐scale ad hoc wireless sensor network (WSN) between acoustic sensors (microphones). Due to the limited communication resources, the noise reduction algorithm should intelligently select the necessary microphone signals that should be transmitted over the network.
To this end, this project targets an unseen and particularly challenging cross-­‐layer optimization, with network layer resource negotiation based on application layer utility functions. Addressing these issues will lead to fundamental contributions and frontier WSN innovation, and hence significant progress in the broader field of audio signal processing
and network design.