Evaluating room acoustic quality in open-plan offices by adding the distribution of possible source and receiver positions to the simulation

Room acoustics in open-plan offices relies on acoustical and organisational measures. In a theoretical model we show that the number of workstations and the amount of speech are crucial factors for acoustical comfort. Each employee may speak or work quietly, so the acoustical system needs to reflect this multi-source and multi-receiver situation. Target parameters from ISO 3382-3 use a single source, a path of receivers and are hard to optimise. For this reason we propose a systematic approach in which all transfer functions between all user positions are simulated. We use the speech transmission index STI to form a source-receiver matrix, reflecting the whole acoustical system. From this matrix, information on the number of intelligible sources is easily available. From the source-receiver matrix acoustical or organisational improvements can be found quickly, with simple concepts easily explained to project partners.