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Professor Francis Morgan Boland

Fellow Emeritus (Electronic & Elect. Engineering)
      
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Professor Francis Morgan Boland

Fellow Emeritus (Electronic & Elect. Engineering)

 Frank.Boland@tcd.ie

 


My career as an engineer has been predominantly based within the academic sector. My teaching experience extends from electrical engineering principles to junior students and teaching advanced topics in signal processing and systems theory to senior undergraduate and postgraduate students. My research work is in the mathematics and algorithms of adaptive systems and digital signal processing for audio and acoustics. A key objective of my research is to create, for a listener, the immersive experience of spatially accurate audio cues that are stable with voluntary or random head and other movements by the user. My research group has achieved novel theoretical and experimental results that include a demonstration that for angle dependent head related impulse (HRIR) response functions, associated with binaural hearing, there exist angle independent sub-systems. We have recently reported a theoretical underpinning of this work by showing its equivalence to the approximate factorisation of sets of polynomials with sets of polynomials with random coefficients.[Details are included in our associated publications] 1 We proposed and verified that within the large data sets of angle dependent head related impulse (HRIR) response functions, associated with binaural hearing, there exist angle independent sub-systems. We have recently reported a theoretical underpinning of this work by showing its equivalence to the approximate factorisation of sets of polynomials with random coefficients and we have also shown that the method can be used to equalise headphone transfer functions. 2 We have implemented an Ambisonic soundfield using a virtual uniform circular array with a rotatable soundfield using headtracking to maintain a stable orientation. 3 We have developed algorithms for detecting and interpolating the reflections in Room Impulse Response functions and a novel method for measuring the standard acoustic decay response of a room. In recent years, the application focus of my research has been the delivery of accurate immersive audio environments over headphones. Results of this research have had a significant impact in audio for Virtual Reality (VR) environments. An outcome of the research is Thrive which is an audio signal processing algorithm and software system for VR. In 2015 the Thrive IP was licensed by Google and provided a basis for the open source environment Resonance Audio for developing rich immersive audio. My current research activities, supported by Science Foundation Ireland, includes Machine Learning for audio source localisation and calibration techniques for digital sound projectors in rooms with uncertain acoustics.
  Applied probability   Communication engineering, technology   Communications engineering   Computer vision and robotics   Control Engineering   Engineering & Physical Acoustics   Foundations and methods   Human computer interactions   Imaging and Computer Vision   Modelling, modelling tools, 3D modelling   Multimedia   Performance and technology   Signal processing   Signal, Video & Audio Processing   Sound Engineering   Speech processing/technology   Systems control, Modelling, Neural networks   Systems Engineering   Systems/Control   Telecommunication Engineering   Telecommunications   Vibration and Accoustic Engineering
Project Title
 Mathematical Modelling of Solar Heating Systems
From
1980
To
1981
Summary
Funding Agency
EU ESA-088
Project Type
Modelling and validation
Project Title
 Project 271 ADVICE
From
December 1984
To
November 1989
Summary
The ADVICE project aimed to develop a methodology and an environment for automatic design error diagnosis using an electron beam
Funding Agency
European Commission
Programme
ESPRIT
Project Title
 Contract No.P4:058 Adaptive Noise Cancelation
From
1 Jan1983
To
Summary
Funding Agency
National Enterprise Agency
Project Title
 Vector quantization of colour imagery
From
1 Jan 1989
To
31 Aug 1990
Summary
Comparison of alternative formulations of the vector quantization paradigm for application to colour imagery.
Funding Agency
APPLE Computers (US) & EOLAS HEIC
Project Title
 Image analysis of colour and texture for the food industry
From
Oct 1991
To
Sept 1993
Summary
Meat quality assessment using machine vision
Funding Agency
EOLAS
Programme
Strategic Award

Page 1 of 4
Details Date
Visiting Academic Researcher, HM Health & Safety
Member NBST Telecommunications Research Committee
Member Forfas, Foresight Committee on IT
Member of the Electrical Division Board of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland
Member of Executive Committee of the Dublin Zoo
External Examiner for undergraduate courses at the University of Ulster and Dublin City University.
External Examiner for PhD and MSc degrees at UK and Irish universities.
Details Date From Date To
Fellow of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland, FIEI, Chartered Engineer, C.Eng. 1990
H. O"Dwyer, and F. Boland, HRTF Clustering for Robust Training of a DNN for Sound Source Localization, Journal Audio Engineering Society, 70, (12), 2022, p1015 - 1026, Notes: [doi: https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2022.0051], Journal Article, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI  URL
O†Dwyer, H. and Csadi, S. and Bates, E. and Boland, F., A study in machine learning applications for sound source localisation with regards to distance, AES 146th Convention, 2019, pp1- , Notes: [cited By 0], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  DOI
Csadi, Sebastian; Boland, Francis M.; Ferguson, Luke; O'Dwyer, Hugh; & Bates, Enda, Direct to Reverberant Ratio Measurements in Small and Mid-sized Rooms, AES International Conference on Immersive and Interactive Audio,, York, UK, March 2019, 2019, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  URL
Bates, Enda; Csadi, Sebastian; O'Dwyer, Hugh; Ferguson, Luke; Boland, Francis M., Recording & Composing Site-Specific Spatial Music for 360 Video, AES 146th Convention, Dublin, Ireland, March 2019, 2019, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  URL
Ferguson, L. and Bates, E. and O†Dwyer, H. and Csadi, S. and Boland, F.M., Calibration of a digital sound projector with scene uncertainty, AES E-Library, AES 146th Convention, , Dublin, Ireland, March 2019, 2019, pp1- , Notes: [cited By 0], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  URL
Gorzel, M. and Allen, A. and Kelly, I. and Kammerl, J. and Gungormusler, A. and Yeh, H. and Boland, F., Efficient encoding and decoding of binaural sound with resonance audio, AES E-Library, Conference on Immersive and Interactive Audio, 2019-March, 2019, pp1- , Notes: [cited By 1], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  URL
O'Dwyer, H. and Bates, E. and Boland, F., A machine learning approach to detecting sound-source elevation in adverse environments, 144th Audio Engineering Society Convention, Milan, 23-26 May, 2018, pp9968-, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  URL
Bates, E. and O†Dwyer, H. and Flachsbarth, K.-P. and Boland, F.M., A recording technique for 6 degrees of freedom VR, 144th Audio Engineering Society Convention , Milan, 23-26 May, 2018, pp10022-, Notes: [cited By 0], Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  URL
O'Dwyer, Hugh.,Bates, Enda and Boland, Francis M., Machine Learning for Sound Source Elevation Detection, The 4th Workshop on Intelligent Music Production (WIMP2018), September 2018, 2018, pp1- , Conference Paper, PUBLISHED  URL  URL
Enda Bates, Sean Dooney, Marcin Gorzel, Hugh O'Dwyer, Luke Ferguson and Francis M. Boland , Comparing Ambisonic Microphones - Part 2, AES 142nd Convention of the AES, Berlin, Germany., 20-23 May, 2017, AES, 2017, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED
  

Page 1 of 11
O'Dwyer, Hugh, Bates, Enda and Boland, Francis M, A Machine Learning Approach to Detecting Sound-Source Elevation in Adverse Environments, Audio Engineering Society Convention 144, Milan, Italy, May 2018, (9968), 2018, Conference Paper, PUBLISHED

  


Award Date
Kelvin Premium, Institution of Electrical Engineers 1977
Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, FTCD 1990
Research interests in digital signal processing and technology for audio, acoustics. Systems theory for modelling and design in complex and adaptive systems.