Uncertainty Constraint on Headphone Secondary Path Function for Designing Cascade Biquad Feedback Controller with Improved Noise Reduction Performance

The uncertainty in the secondary path of active noise control (ANC) headphones affects the waterbed effect and stability of the feedback system. This study focuses on the uncertainty of the secondary path when real users wear headphones and proposes a new uncertainty constraint based on the measured results of the secondary path transfer function under different wearing conditions of a dummy head and limited subjects. This constraint and a cascaded second-order infinite impulse response filter with fixed coefficients are used to formulate a control strategic function, which is optimized using the Improved Grey Wolf Optimizer (IGWO) algorithm to obtain the optimal controller with better noise reduction performance. The proposed method and simulation model are validated based on the experimental test results. The results demonstrate that the safety factor and waterbed suppressing factor contained in the proposed uncertainty constraint ensure more stable noise reduction and effective suppression of the waterbed effect for new subjects without a priori data.