Coherence and interference in diffuse noise: On the information and statistics associated with spatial wave correlations in directional noise fields

Broadband noise correlation methods for the passive extraction of information about the propagation of waves between distant sensor locations have received considerable attention in the literature. For the case of an isotropic ambient field distribution, there is a well-defined relationship between the expectation value of the wave coherence over the sensors and point-to-point wave propagation. Experimental applications, however, must contend with ambient field anisotropy as well as the performance limitations associated with stochastic fluctuations. This paper explores the influence of ambient field directionality on both (1) the connection between the measured wave coherence and sensor-to-sensor propagation and on (2) the rate at which measurements stochastically converge to the expectation value of the underlying wave coherence. Due to diffraction, the relationship between the measured wave coherence and sensor-to-sensor propagation is shown to be robust to even highly directional ambient field features. While the fluctuations of a stochastic system are generally known to depend on bandwidth and measurement duration, the rate of stochastic convergence depends additionally on the cross-spectral power density (coherent power) relative to the power-spectral density (total incident power). Practical experimental implications of these results are discussed. (C) 2012 Acoustical Society of America. [DOI: 10.1121/1.3682050]