Sound Field Estimation around a Rigid Sphere with Physics-informed Neural Network

Abstract: Accurate estimation of the sound field around a rigid sphere necessitates adequate sampling on the sphere, which may not always be possible. To overcome this challenge, this paper proposes a method for sound field estimation based on a physics-informed neural network. This approach integrates physical knowledge into the architecture and training process of the network. In contrast to other learning-based methods, the proposed method incorporates additional constraints derived from the Helmholtz equation and the zero radial velocity condition on the rigid sphere. Consequently, it can generate physically feasible estimations without requiring a large dataset. In contrast to the spherical harmonic-based method, the proposed approach has better fitting abilities and circumvents the ill condition caused by truncation. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in achieving accurate sound field estimations from limited measurements, outperforming the spherical harmonic method and plane-wave decomposition method.