Fast acoustic scattering using convolutional neural networks

Abstract: Diffracted scattering and occlusion are important acoustic effects in interactive auralization and noise control applications, typically requiring expensive numerical simulation. We propose training a convolutional neural network to map from a convex scatterer's cross-section to a 2D slice of the resulting spatial loudness distribution. We show that employing a full-resolution residual network for the resulting image-to-image regression problem yields spatially detailed loudness fields with a root-mean-squared error of less than 1 dB, at over 100x speedup compared to full wave simulation.