Metrological reverse engineering of Microsoft Kinectics microphone Array

In the last few years sound and audio has become more andmore important for developers and consumers in the gamingsector. Aware of that, developers are not only putting moreeffort and resources into the design and reproduction ofsound, but also alternative approaches such as voice controlare coming increasingly used. Due to this, new gaming devices with voice and motioncontrol (without the use of classic hand-controllers) offer anew, unprecedented gaming experience, most notablyMicrosoft’s Kinect for XBOX 360. With the release of Microsoft’s SDK (Source DevelopmentKit) for Kinect [1], developers are now able to use the Kinect and the contained microphone array for a hugevariety of different applications [2] on the computer. In this paper we concentrate on reverse engineering ofKinect’s microphone array. Therefore metrologicalmeasurements are used to examine the microphone array’sacoustic characteristics such as beam accuracy, impulseresponses, transfer functions and the directivity pattern inorder to grasp the possibilities and potential for newinnovations and further projects.