Scientific Article

Investigations on drone-mounted active noise control

Institute of Communications Systems (IKS), RWTH Aachen University, Muffeter Weg 3a 52074, Aachen, Germany

^* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received: 12 December 2025
Accepted: 25 March 2026

Abstract

Although drones have many potential applications including parcel delivery and surveillance, their deployment in urban areas is limited by their noise levels. As a mitigation approach, this work considers active noise control (ANC) with drone-mounted secondary sound sources and reference sensors. The feasibility of this approach is investigated in a controlled acoustic environment. Because commercially available drones lack the hardware required for ANC, two drones were equipped with loudspeakers and microphones for measurement purposes. ANC filter design requires information about the electro-acoustic paths, which are investigated based on measurements in a hemi-anechoic chamber. This facilitates the development of a multichannel feedforward control structure, and its evaluation through simulations. The investigation indicates the feasibility of such systems, as spatially robust median attenuation of 9.4 dB and a peak attenuation of over 15 dB is achieved in simulations. Although further investigation is needed to verify the results, this work documents a principally viable system and identifies its fundamental challenges.