Real-time audio-integrated active noise control system for infant incubators

Excessive noise levels inside infants incubators in neonatal care units contribute to a number of harmful effects on the infant's health. This thesis develops and implements a practical audio-integrated active noise control (ANC) system for the infant incubators. An experimental setup based on a real GiraffeRTM incubator from GE Healthcare is used for real-time experiments. Computer simulations using the measured transfer functions from the experimental setup are first presented to evaluate the performance of both the single-channel and multi-channel ANC algorithms in reducing the incubator noise and integrating the comfort audio to mask residual noise and create the prenatal ambience to the infant. A nonlinear filtered-X least mean M-estimate (FXLMM) algorithm is also implemented. A three-dimensional (3-D) grid is built to measure the real-time performance of the ANC systems at uniform-spaced 3-D locations inside the incubator. The cancellations results at all the measuring points are tabulated and also presented graphically. The main contribution of the thesis is to integrate the comfort audio with the single-channel ANC system and present the real-time experiment results.