Commercially available active noise control headphones rely on fixed analog controllers to drive "anti-noise" loudspeakers. Our design uses an adaptive controller to optimally cancel unwanted acoustic noise. This headphone would be particularly useful for workers who operate or work near heavy machinery and engines because the noise is selectively eliminated. Desired sounds, such as speech and warning signals, are left to be heard clearly. The adaptive control algorithm is implemented on a Texas Instruments (TI™ ) 1 TMS320C30GEL digital signal processor (DSP), which drives a Sony CD550 headphone/microphone system. Our experiments indicate that adaptive noise control results in a dramatic improvement in performance over fixed noise control. This improvement is due to the availability of high-performance programmable DSPs and the self-optimizing and tracking capabilities of the adaptive controller in response to the surrounding noise.
