Audio Coding for Beamforming with Distributed Microphones

In this contribution we investigate the influence of audio coding on beamforming algorithms. Usually, a beamforming system would be implemented in the same device as the microphones. However, for some devices such as wireless distributed microphone arrays, or digital hearing aids, it may be necessary to transmit the microphone signals prior to combining. Since any digital signal transmission will introduce quantization noise, the subsequent beamformer processing will be influenced. In this paper, we investigate the behavior of a differential beamformer and a generalized sidelobe canceler after encoding and decoding of microphone signals. Furthermore, an example of a suitable audio coding scheme is given.