THE HUGE MICROPHONE ARRAY

The Huge Microphone Array project began in February 1994 to design, co nstruct, debug, and tests real-time 512-microphone array system and to develop algorithms for it; Analysis of known algorithms indicated tha t signal-processing performance of over 6 Gflops would be required, wh ile the need for portability-fitting it into a small van-also set an u pper limit to the power required. These trade-offs and many others hav e led to a unique design in both hardware and software. This two-part article presents the full design and its justifications. The authors a lso discuss performance for a few important algorithms relative to the use of processing capability, response latency, and difficulty of pro gramming.