Active Noise Control on Conventional Windows: Test Bench Design and Preliminary Results

In densely populated urban areas, environmental noise has become a pervasive challenge, significantly affecting residents’ comfort, health, and overall quality of life. This contribution presents the development and initial experimental evaluation of an active noise control (ANC) system applied to conventional window structures, aiming to enhance their overall sound insulation performance. A dedicated test bench was developed, consisting of a small concrete reverberation chamber placed inside a semi anechoic chamber. The receiving side is acoustically treated to reproduce the reverberation time of a typical residential living space.
The ANC system utilizes structure-borne actuators mounted on the windowpane and reference microphones positioned based on experimental modal and transfer path analyses to ensure high coherence within the relevant frequency range. The control strategy is implemented using the filtered-x least mean squares (FxLMS) algorithm.
Preliminary measurements demonstrate that the implemented ANC system effectively reduces transmitted sound through the window, particularly in the otherwise critical low-frequency range, thereby improving the overall sound reduction index. The presented setup provides a flexible research platform for future studies focusing on hardware optimization and advanced control strategies, such as deep learning technics for system identification and adaptive control.