The principles of time-intensity panning and of using non-coincident microphone arrays for recording multichannel audio have been well established. Unlike previous studies which focus on lower-order mi- crophones or assume ideal directivity patterns, this paper presents a practical design of higher-order non-coincident microphone arrays for multichannel recording and reproduction based on time-intensity panning. In this design, higher-order microphones are implemented using linear differential microphone arrays (LDMAs). Furthermore, a comprehensive framework for differential beamformer design and array topology optimization is developed, which minimizes the er- ror between the actual beampattern and the ideal directivity pat- tern while ensuring the beamformer robustness. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed microphone array and the associated differential beamformer.
Zhao et al. (Sat,) studied this question.