A particle velocity based method for separating all multi incoherent sound sources

In this paper we present a method to separate the contributions of different uncorrelated sound sources to the total sound field. When the contribution of each sound source to the total sound field is known, techniques with array-applications like direct sound field measurements or inverse acoustics methods can directly be applied for each source. The new technique makes use of surface velocity properties without measuring background noise, using vector properties of the particle velocity whereas the sound pressure is a scalar. Our paper discusses a new technique to obtain the contribution of each source from the measured total sound field. The method includes the possibility to check if all source contributions are correctly retrieved from the total sound field. The experiments were performed with a new experimental particle velocity sensor processed in thin film technology, able to measure four directions very close to the surface, from where the three orthogonal directions can be deduced.