Interpolation of Sparsely Sampled Array Transfer Functions for Head-Worn Microphone Arrays

Fontaine K, Berebi O, Rafaely B, Arend JM. Interpolation of Sparsely Sampled Array Transfer Functions for Head-Worn Microphone Arrays. In: AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games. Audio Engineering Society; 2026. Paper 507. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23354

@inproceedings{Fontaine2026_23354,
  author = {Fontaine, Konstantin and Berebi, Or and Rafaely, Boaz and Arend, Johannes M.},
  title = {{Interpolation of Sparsely Sampled Array Transfer Functions for Head-Worn Microphone Arrays}},
  booktitle = {AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games},
  note = {Paper 507},
  year = {2026},
  month = jun,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23354}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Interpolation of Sparsely Sampled Array Transfer Functions for Head-Worn Microphone Arrays
AU  - Fontaine, Konstantin
AU  - Berebi, Or
AU  - Rafaely, Boaz
AU  - Arend, Johannes M.
T2  - AVARIG 2026: Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality and Immersive Games
M1  - Paper 507
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/30
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23354
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - Integrating microphone arrays into head-worn devices, such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) headsets, as well as hearing aids, has become increasingly popular for capturing and reproducing acoustic scenes. A common requirement in many such systems is a dense set of array transfer functions (ATFs). However, dense ATFs are cumbersome to measure, and practical setups commonly yield sparse grids rather than the uniform dense sampling often required. This motivates the use of interpolation to reconstruct dense ATF sets from sparse measurements. This paper evaluates spherical harmonics and natural-neighbor interpolation, each combined with onset-based time-alignment and post-interpolation magnitude correction, for a head-worn array across sampling densities. To examine how interpolation errors propagate to binaural rendering, the interpolated ATFs are substituted into two recent filter design methods: signal-independent binaural signal matching (BSM) and a signaldependent method combining COMPASS parametric spatial coding with BSM (COM). Results show that BSM remains largely robust to interpolation errors, while COM substantially degrades under sparse sampling conditions with errors comparable to BSM at the lowest density, but achieves considerably lower errors than BSM as the sampling grid density increases. This is because BSM averages errors across all steering directions, while COM relies on individual steering vectors for source-directed beamforming.
ER  -