Active Noise Control for Motorcycle Helmets
Kishan P. Raghunathan and Sen M. Kuo
Department of Electrical Engineering
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL, USA
Abstract- Continuous exposure to high-level of
motorcycle noise has a risk of damaging hearing and
degrading the quality of music for entertainment.
This paper develops an innovative audio-integrated
active noise control (ANC) system for motorcycle
helmets to cancel noise and preserve the audio
quality. Motorcycle noises measured at ditTerent
speeds are recorded, analyzed and used to evaluate
the performance of audio-integrated ANC system.
Both computer simulations and real-time
experiments show the feasibility of using
developed ANC helmets for hearing protection and
audio entertainment.
INTRODUCTION
According to National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration, there are approximately 5 million
registered motorcycle owners in USA [1].
Motorcycle noise threatens hearing; it acts as a
silent killer and even result in permanent hearing
loss. Motorcycle noise levels on an open road are in
the ranges of 78-90 dBA at 30 mph (mile-per-hour)
to 116 dBA at 120 mph, depending on types of
helmets, motorcycles, and the conditions of roads.
The average rate of increase in noise level is 15.5
dB per doubling of speed [2]. Continuous exposure
to noise level of 95 dBA for more than 2.5 hours
may result in various hearing impairments such as,
hearing loss, tinnitus, acoustic shock, and even
leads to accidents [3].
Figure 1 depicts the spectrum of a real
motorcycle noise recorded at the speed of 40 mph,
which shows most of energy is concentrated at low
frequencies from 10 to 300 Hz. Conventional
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Woon S. Gan
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
motorcycle helmets or ear plugs do not provide
good attenuation for such low-frequency noise, and
it is costly and impractical for certain advanced
passive noise attenuation techniques due to weight
and size constraints of helmets [4]. In addition, the
quality of the audio in the presence of the
motorcycle noise degrades drastically, and requires
high volume that can even result in mental stress
and leads to accident.
the
To attenuate the motorcycle noise and to
preserve the quality of audio from the audio system
in the motorcycle, this paper presents an innovative
audio-integrated ANC technique using feedforward
broadband algorithm. Its performance is first
evaluated using computer simulations with
measured transfer functions from realistic
experimental setup, and further tested using real­
time experiments using recorded motorcycle noises.
Real time experiment of audio-integrated ANC
is carried out using recorded real motorcycle sounds
as primary noise and music as the desired audio.
The objectives of the experimental results are to
achieve:
1. Cancellation of harmful noise
2. Integration of audio has no effect on the
performance of ANC
3. Desired audio components will not be
cancelled by ANC and its quality can be
preserved
An additional advantage is that the integrated audio
masks residual noise after ANC algorithm has
converged in steady state. It also provides on-line
170
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, ,
Spectram of Motor cycle n oise@40 mileslhr
1� ��--��--��--T-�--��--�
, ,

x(n) den) : + : e(n)

Primary Path L
100
P(z) , ,
, ,
-
, ,
00 , ,
L _______ _____1

y'(n)

Adaptive Filter
W(z)

-�

-40

-600 200 400 600 EOJ 1COJ 1200 1400 1600 1EOJ 2COJ
frequency (Hz)

Figure 1 Spectrum of motorcycle noise at 40 mph. Figure 2. Block diagram of the broadband ANC using
the FXLMS algorithm (adapted from [4 D.

modeling of the secondary path to further improve x(n)=[x(n)x(n-l)... x(n-L+l)Y is the signal vector
ANC performance under time-varying at time n.The weight-update equation of the
environment. adaptive filter is given by
wen + 1) = wen) + Lux'(n)e(n)], (2)
I. FEEDFORWARD ANC SYSTEM
where J.i is the step size, and the filtered signal
The motorcycle used for acquiring real motorcycle
noise is the Harley Davidson's Heritage Softtail
vector x'(n)=[x'(n)x'(n-l)... x'(n-L+l)Y IS the
with a two-cylinder, 4-stroke engine. The noise was filtered version of x(n),
recorded using the 722 high-resolution digital audio x'(n) sen) * x(n) ,
= (3)
recorder [ ]. As shown in Figure 1, motorcycle where s( n) is the impulse response of S (z), that is
noise falls into the category of broadband noise. To
cancel the broadband noise and to compensate the the estimate of the secondary path S(z).
To preserve the audio from music players and to
effects of the secondary path, the broadband
mask residual noise after noise cancellation, the
feedforward ANC using the filtered-x least-mean­
traditional ANC algorithm is embedded with audio
square (FXLMS) algorithm [4] shown in Figure 2 is
to form audio-integrated ANC system. There are
developed for motorcycle helmets. two important issues to be considered for the
The undesired noise from a noise source integrated system [5]:
transmits through the primary path P(z) resulting in 1. The audio added to the loudspeaker may
the primary noise den), the anti-noiseyen) generated interfere with the ANC algorithm
by the adaptive filter propagates through the
secondary path S(z) resulting in Y'(n). These noises 2. ANC system may cancel the desired audio
are acoustically superimposed, resulting in error We have to make sure that the audio-integrated
signal (or residual noise) e(n), which is fed back to ANC system can overcome these problems by
the least-mean-square (LMS) algorithm. The removing the audio component from the error
reference signal x(n) is filtered by the estimated signal that is used to update the adaptive filter
secondary path transfer function to generate x'(n), coefficients. The block diagram of audio-integrated
which is served as an input to the LMS algorithm. ANC is shown in Figure 3.
The adaptive filter output is given by As shown in Figure 3, the audio component
yen) wT (n)x(n),
= ( 1) men) is added to adaptive filter outputy(n). At the
acoustic summing junction, the error signal e_m(n)
where w(n)=[wo(n)wl(n)... wL_1(n)Y are theL-tap
consists of the residual error e(n) and the audio
adaptive filter's coefficients, and component men). To avoid the interference of the

171

X(II)
•
,,
e(lI)
( )
/11 11
,.'._-----------------------------------) ,------'---,
Figure 3 Block diagram of audio-integrated
system.
audio component on the ANC algorithm, the audio
component m (n) filtered through secondary path
has to be subtracted from e_m (n) to obtain the true
error signal e (n) . This true error signal is then used
to update the weights of the adaptive filter W(z).
Assuming that we have the perfect secondary
path model, i.e. S(z) S(z) , the true error becomes
=
e(n) den) - [sen) * y(n)].
= (4)
Thus, the advantages of the audio-integrated ANC
system include: (1) eliminating the interference of
audio on the performance of traditional ANC, (2)
modeling the secondary path online to improve the
performance of the FXLMS algorithm, (3)
providing audio entertainment and also masking
residual noise after noise cancellation, and (4)
integrating into the existing helmet ANC hardware
such as amplifiers and loudspeakers. This forms a
compact, robust, low power, and cost effective
solution for ANC in motorcycle helmets and audio
on road.
II. SIMULATION RESULTS
An experimental setup shown in Figure 4 is used to
measure the primary path and secondary path
transfer functions. The obtained transfer functions
are used to construct computer model for
simulations.
The system consists of one primary microphone,
.--'---->..;;- Secondary Speakers
�-+-"'<-+.... Secondary Path S(z)
'---,---
-- '---
----, ....
-- Error Microphones
Primary Microphones
Primary Speakers
Figure 4 Primary and secondary paths in realistic
helmet ANC environment.
two error microphones and two secondary speakers
as shown (one side only) in Figure 4. The primary
ANC speaker is placed 65 cm away from the rider
(emulated by B&K torso and head simulator,
KEMAR) and the secondary speaker is installed
inside the helmet. The primary microphone is
placed in front of the helmet near the mouth of the
rider, and the error microphone is placed near the
ear of the KEMAR.
MATLAB simulation of audio-integrated ANC
system using the FXLMS algorithm shown in
Figure 3 is performed. To prove that the integration
of audio does not interfere with the ANC
performance, we consider two cases: (1) ANC for
motorcycle noise without integration of audio, and
(2) ANC for motorcycle noise with integration of
audio. The noise to be cancelled is the recorded
motorcycle noise, and the music comes from a
personnel entertainment system. The filter lengths
are 64 taps and 32 taps for the adaptive filter W(z)
and the secondary-path estimate S (z) , respectively,
and the step size is .0003.
Figure 5 shows spectra of signal measured at the
error microphone before (ANC OFF) and after
(ANC ON) noise cancellation. It shows that the
motorcycle noise has a wide range of frequency
components and the average cancellation is
approximately 40 dB in the frequency range of 0 to
250 Hz. The performance of the system is good in
the low-frequency with high levels of the
motorcycle noise.
172
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to:ANC
- ANCON
OFF] 0.35

0.3

025

02

�
0,.

01

005

0
300 GOO 0
Froquoncy(Hz)

Figure 7 Power estimation of motorcycle noise at 40

Figure 5 Motorcycle noise spectra at the error
mph, error output and the integrated audio
microphone without audio integration

j
G
,.- ANCOF
-ANCON

-20

-40

100 200 300 400

FrequencyCHz)

Figure 8 Experimental setup for testing motorcycle

Figure 6 Motorcycle noise spectra at the error
microphones with audio integration
Figure 6 shows spectra of error signals before
and after noise cancellation for the audio-integrated
ANC. An important fact observed in Figures 5 and
6 is that similar results for the system with and
without audio integration, which proves that the
audio integration has no effect on the performance
of ANC if the perfect secondary-path model
S(z) S(z) is available.
=
Figure 7 shows the power estimation of the
motorcycle noise at 40 mph, error output, and the
integrated audio, which gives the cancellation in
terms of power at each instance of time. The
convergence of ANC system in terms of power of
the error output is observed in Figure 7. The
simulation results of audio-integrated feedforward
ANC using the FXLMS algorithm are very
encouragmg.
helmet ANC
III. REAL TIME EXPERIMENTS
To mimic a person riding a motorcycle with helmet
under noisy conditions, an experimental setup is
built as shown in Figure 8. A high-speed 32-bit
TMS320C3x signal processor and suitable
electronic hardware are selected. B&K's KEMAR
is used which resembles a person on a bike wearing
a helmet. Primary noise is played through the
primary loudspeaker which is placed 65 cm away
from the KEAMAR. The error microphone is used
to monitor the performance of ANC algorithm.
Audio from a music player is directly integrated
into the system and is played through the secondary
speaker through which anti-noise is played.
The real-time experiment results of audio­
integrated ANC for real motorcycle noise at 40
mph are shown in Figures 9 and 10. Figure 9 shows
the transition from ANC OFF to ANC ON to audio

173
 BOO
600
soo+---ANC OFF -....I-
�
�.oo �400
i300 �200 ·100

�
1200 u. 0- ·150
100 5 6 10 11
me (sec)
10 15 25 30 OJ
Tm!(>e<) 600
PI N
:t
00
�4
�200
Ii

u.

4 5
Tme(sec)
Oil

5
TIMe Incsex
(II)

Figure 9 (i) Spectrogram showing the transition from

ANC OFF to ANC ON to audio integration, and (ii)
time domain representation of ANC OFF to ANC ON to 4 5
Tune (sec)
audio integration. Oii)

Figure 10 Spectrograms of (i) audio only, (ii) audio

integration using both spectrogram (top) and time
with noise (ANC OFF), and (iii) audio with noise
waveform. It is observed that the harmful
(ANC ON).
motorcycle noise is cancelled and the audio
integration does not interfere with the ANC recorded motorcycle noises and measured transfer
performance. functions from the experimental setup. Real time
experiments of audio-integrated ANC system using
Two important points observed in Figure 9 are:
the TMS320C3x processor for real motorcycle
( 1) the integration of audio has no negative effect
noise are conducted; the issues and constraints are
on the ANC performance, and (2) the spectrogram
addressed. Experiment results successfully showed
of audio without noise and spectrogram of
that the integrated audio has no effect on the
background audio after noise cancellation are
performance of the ANC and the audio components
similar as depicted in Figures lOCi) and lO(iii). This
are not cancelled by the ANC.
proves that the audio components are not been
cancelled by the ANC and the quality of the audio REFERENCES
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