A Feedback Active Control Approach to Road Noise Based on a Single Microphone Sensor to Improve Automotive Cabin Sound Comfort

Tire–road noise deteriorates the sound quality of a vehicle’s interior and affects the driving safety and comfort. Obtaining low interior noise is a challenge for passenger car manufacturers. Traditional passive noise control (PNC) is efficient for canceling high frequency noise but not useful for low frequency noise, while active noise control (ANC), according to the residual error signal, can generate an anti-noise signal to reduce the original noise. Most research has focused on improving the control effect for a feedforward ANC system. However, this paper emphasizes a feedback ANC system based on a signal microphone sensor. There are two main contributions in this study to improve automotive cabin sound comfort. One is that the algorithm of the feedback ANC system using a single microphone sensor without a reference noise signal is proposed based on the Filtered-x Least Mean Square method. The other is that the algorithm applies additive random noise online to estimate the secondary path model. A simulation was implemented based on measured real road noise data, and the simulation results indicate that the proposed feedback ANC system with the single microphone sensor can effectively attenuate road noise. This study shows the feasibility of applying a feedback ANC system in automobiles to increase the cabin sound quality.