Speech and noise levels for predicting the degree of speech security
John S. Bradley, Bradford N. Gover · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2005
A meeting room is speech secure when it is difficult or impossible for an eavesdropper to overhear speech from within. The degree of security could range from less stringent conditions of being barely able to understand a few words from the meeting room, to higher levels, where transmitted speech would be completely inaudible. This paper reports on measurements to determine the statistical distribution of speech levels in meeting rooms and the distribution of ambient noise levels just outside meeting rooms. To select the required transmission characteristics for a meeting room wall, one would first decide on an acceptable level of risk, in terms of the probability of a speech security lapse occurring. This leads to the selection of a combination of a speech level in the meeting room and a noise level nearby that would occur together with this probability. The combination of appropriate estimates of meeting room speech levels and nearby ambient noise levels, together with the sound transmission characteristics of the intervening partition, makes it possible to calculate signal/noise ratio indices related to speech security [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 116(6), 3480–3490 (2004)]. The value of these indices indicates if adequate speech security will be achieved.