A low wind-noise microphone

Wind noise on microphones is problematic because of the possibility of overloading the microphone amplifiers and also because of potentially obscuring useful signals such as the low-frequency noise from wind turbines. While baffles certainly help, they may also modify the reception of signals of interest. In response to this problem we describe a new approach where a closely-spaced array of microphones is mounted flush into a small-diameter surface. When wind is incident on this surface, a turbulent boundary layer forms (in fact the source of the wind noise on the microphones). However, the distance from individual microphones to the upstream leading edge of the surface varies depending on wind direction. The result is that the turbulent boundary layer properties are different for each microphone in the array. We use the properties of turbulent generated wind noise to determine the wind direction and the turbulent spectrum on the array. This allows for correction to mitigate the wind-generated noise.