Affiliations: Computer Engineering Department, Jordan University of
Science and Technology, Irbid 22110, Jordan | Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, The
University of Michigan – Dearborn, Dearborn, MI 48128. E-mail:
shaout@umich.edu
Abstract: Advances in home and automotive and entertainment system technology
have made it possible to offer exceptional sound quality reproduction to
consumers. In recent years, automotive audio systems' quality has approached
that of home systems. However, high and variable ambient noise levels remain
difficult to overcome and impose a major limitation on the automotive sound
system. Currently, some of these systems use classical controllers, which are
based on the estimation of the ambient noise using the speed of the vehicle.
Due to the effects of road and weather conditions and other factors such as the
status of the windows or sunroof, these systems do not provide adequate noise
compensation. Other systems measure the noise levels inside the vehicle and use
complicated circuitry and algorithms for compensation. This paper introduces
the application of fuzzy logic for automatic volume control in automotive
systems that compensates for interior and exterior noise while excluding the
effect of passengers' conservation. In stead of using simple table-based
approaches which need excessive tuning or complex DSP approaches which need
large processing power and suffer from non-linearity, we utilize the expertise
of human drivers and the power of fuzzy logic to develop an automatic volume
control that is simple to develop, easy to implement, and yet powerful. We have
conducted several experiments on real audio signals and the results prove the
effectiveness of the proposed approach.
