Currently used procedures in room acoustics measurements are not automated. Particularly in medium-sized and large areas they require a lot of time and intensive labour which directly translates into an increase in the measurement cost. Introduction of an automated system would increase efficiency of the measurements, and therefore could present both practical and scientific benefit. The paper presents initial feasibility study for designing a system that permits the measurement of selected acoustic parameters for any choice of three-dimensional grid of measurement points throughout the volume of the room. The system will utilize an autonomous probe attached to a blimp, and will be able to measure and analyze acoustic characteristics of the rooms. The article discusses the initial choices of the system elements, starting from the general idea, through the mechanical design and control procedures, the software that controls positioning and flying of the probe, up to the automation of the measurement procedure and its possible impact on the acoustic field.

The assessment of the uncertainty of measurement results, an essential problem in environmental acoustic investigations, is undertaken in the paper. An attention is drawn to the - usually omitted - problem of the verification of assumptions related to using the classic methods of the confidence intervals estimation, for the controlled measuring quantity.

Especially the paper directs attention to the need of the verification of the assumption of the normal distribution of the measuring quantity set, being the base for the existing and binding procedures of the acoustic measurements assessment uncertainty. The essence of the undertaken problem concerns the binding legal and standard acts related to acoustic measurements and recommended in: 'Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement' (GUM) (OIML 1993), developed under the aegis of the International Bureau of Measures (BIPM). The model legitimacy of the hypothesis of the normal distribution of the measuring quantity set in acoustic measurements is discussed and supplemented by testing its likelihood on the environment acoustic results.

The Jarque-Bery test based on skewness and flattening (curtosis) distribution measures was used for the analysis of results verifying the assumption. This test allows for the simultaneous analysis of the deviation from the normal distribution caused both by its skewness and flattening. The performed experiments concerned analyses of the distribution of sound levels: LD, LE, LN, LDWN, being the basic noise indicators in assessments of the environment acoustic hazards.

The absorption of sound in air represents one of the main problems of the scale model measurements. This absorption, especially at higher frequencies, is considerably greater than the value determined by the law of acoustical similarity between the full scale and the scale model. Different alternatives are applied for compensation of the excess air absorption including a numerical compensation. In this paper, a modified approach to numerical compensation is proposed. It is based on compensation of the sound decay only, and not background noise. As a consequence, there is no an increase of background noise in the compensated impulse response. The results obtained by the proposed procedure are compared to the corresponding ones obtained by the other procedures.

Several methods can be applied for analyses of the acoustic field in enclosed rooms namely: wave propagation, geometrical or statistical analysis. The paper presents problems related to application of the boundary elements method to modelling of acoustic field parameters. Experimental and numerical studies have been combined for evaluation of acoustic impedance of the material used for the walls of a model room. The experimental studies have been carried out by implementing a multichannel measuring system inside the constructed model of an industrial room. The measuring system allowed simultaneous measurements of the source parameters - the loudspeaker membrane vibration speed, the acoustic pressure values in reception points located inside the model space as well as phase shifts between signals registered in various reception points. The numerical modelling making use of the acoustic pressure values measured inside the analyzed space allowed determination of requested parameters of the surface at the space boundary.

The specific working conditions of the wind turbine in strong wind cause a number of problems in the measurement of noise indicators used in its short and long-term assessment. The wind is a natural working environment of the turbine, but it also affects the measurement system, moreover, it can be a secondary source of other sounds that interfere with the measurement. One of the effective methods of eliminating the direct impact of wind on the measurement system is placing the microphone on the measurement board at ground level. However, the obtained result can not be directly compared with the admissible values, as it has to be converted to a result at a height of 4 m. The results of previous studies show that this relation depends, inter alia, on the speed and direction of the wind. The paper contains the results of measurements on the measurement board, according to EN 61400-11:2013, and at a height of 4 m above ground made simultaneously in three points around the 2 MW turbine at various instantaneous speeds and changing wind directions. Analysis of the impact of measuring point location on the measurement result of noise indicators and the occurrence of additional features affecting the relationship between the values measured on the board and at the height of 4 m, and especially the tonality, amplitude modulation and content of low frequency content, was m

Particle Image Velocimetry is getting more and more often the method of choice not only for visualization of turbulent mass flows in fluid mechanics, but also in linear and non-linear acoustics for non-intrusive visualization of acoustic particle velocity. Particle Image Velocimetry with low sampling rate (about 15Hz) can be applied to visualize the acoustic field using the acquisition synchronized to the excitation signal. Such phase-locked PIV technique is described and used in experiments presented in the paper. The main goal of research was to propose a model of PIV systematic error due to non-zero time interval between acquisitions of two images of the examined sound field seeded with tracer particles, what affects the measurement of complex acoustic signals. Usefulness of the presented model is confirmed experimentally. The correction procedure, based on the proposed model, applied to measurement data increases the accuracy of acoustic particle velocity field visualization and creates new possibilities in observation of sound fields excited with multi-tonal or band-limited noise signals.

The acoustic vector sensor (AVS) is used to measure the acoustic intensity, which gives the direction-ofarrival (DOA) of an acoustic source. However, while estimating the DOA from the measured acoustic intensity the finite microphone separation (d) in a practical AVS causes angular bias. Also, in the presence of noise there exists a trade off between the bias (strictly increasing function of d) and variance (strictly decreasing function of d) of the DOA estimate. In this paper, we propose a novel method for mitigating the angular bias caused due to finite microphone separation in an AVS. We have reduced the variance by increasing the microphone separation and then removed the bias with the proposed bias model. Our approach employs the finite element method (FEM) and curves fitting to model the angular bias in terms of microphone separations and frequency of a narrowband signal. Further, the bias correction algorithm based on the intensity spectrum has been proposed to improve the DOA estimation accuracy of a broadband signal. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed bias correction scheme significantly reduces the angular bias and improves the root mean square angular error (RMSAE) in the presence of noise. Experiments have been performed in an acoustic full anechoic room to corroborate the effect of microphone separation on DOA estimation and the efficacy of the bias correction method.