Does loudspeaker directivity really influence the reconstructed indoor temperature quality using Acoustic travel-time TOMography?

Abstract

A recent published work by (Othmani et al. 2024) showed that an indoor temperature field can be efficiently reconstructed using Acoustic travel-time TOMography (ATOM) without considering the directivity of the loudspeaker. Strictly speaking, in the work of (Othmani et al. 2024), the W3-315E loudspeaker was assumed to be omnidirectional rather than directional. This is due to the fact that the ATOM technique is based on predicting the position of the max (so-called time-of-flight (ToF)) in the measured reflectogram rather than the sound energy. Accordingly, the main open question in the present work is “does loudspeaker directivity really influence the indoor reconstructed field?”. Thus, a comparison of the reconstructed indoor temperature in the work of (Othmani et al. 2024) with an approximation of an omnidirectional loudspeaker and the present results (with angle directivity of ± 30°) answers this need and sets forth to explore the influences of the loudspeaker directivity on the reconstructed field quality. Results show that the temperature discrepancy remains similar for both, whether the directivity of the loudspeaker is taken into account or not.