Parameterizing Human Pinna Shape for the Estimation of Head-related Transfer Functions

In their recent paper[2], Tao et. al describe the method of differential pressure synthesis (DPS), an efficient way of estimating the pressure response of human head shapes. The DPS method in its present form is unsuitable for parameterising the complex shape of the human pinna. We propose a novel method of parameterising human pinna shape using a compact set of elliptic Fourier coefficients. We present the results of acoustic simulations in which the trade-off between acoustic accuracy and data compression is investigated for a pinna mounted on an infinite baffle. An important application of the method, when integrated into DPS, is the estimation of personalised head-related transfer functions.