On the Usefulness of Diffusion-Based Room Impulse Response Interpolation to Microphone Array Processing

2026-03-30

AI Summary

This work addresses the performance limitations of microphone arrays in practical applications caused by the scarcity of densely sampled room impulse responses (RIRs). To this end, it introduces the first diffusion model–based framework for RIR interpolation. The proposed method adapts and extends diffusion mechanisms from image inpainting to one-dimensional acoustic impulse response signals, enabling high-fidelity synthesis of RIRs at missing spatial locations. Experimental results on real-world RIR datasets demonstrate that the approach robustly accomplishes interpolation tasks and significantly enhances the performance of multi-microphone speech enhancement and spatial audio processing systems. These findings validate the efficacy and practical utility of diffusion models in realistic acoustic scenarios.

Technology Category

Computer Vision: Diffusion Models for VisionMachine Learning: Large Multimodal Models (LMMs)Natural Language Processing: Speech

Application Category

Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Multilingual and cross-lingual Web searchUser Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systemsSystems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Applied ML and AI for Web-based mobile applications

Abstract

Room Impulse Responses estimation is a fundamental problem in spatial audio processing and speech enhancement. In this paper, we build upon our previously introduced diffusion-based inpainting framework for Room Impulse Response interpolation and demonstrate its applicability to enhancing the performance of practical multi-microphone array processing tasks. Furthermore, we validate the robustness of this method in interpolating real-world Room Impulse Responses.

Problem

• Room Impulse Response
• microphone array processing
• spatial audio processing
• speech enhancement
• interpolation

Innovation

• diffusion-based interpolation
• Room Impulse Response
• microphone array processing
• spatial audio
• inpainting framework