Date of Award

12-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Computer Engineering and Sciences

First Advisor

Eraldo Ribeiro

Second Advisor

Xianqi Li

Third Advisor

Marius Silaghi

Fourth Advisor

Brian A. Lail

Abstract

Accurate localization of gunshots in multi-room building environments remains a challenging problem in acoustic forensics and public safety applications. Existing approaches model sound propagation within a single room, neglecting the transmission of acoustic energy through walls and other building materials. This thesis presents a study on modeling multi-room gunshot acoustic transmission, combining geometric ray tracing with structural acoustic transmission-loss modeling to generate impulse responses for two horizontally adjacent rooms separated by a shared wall, providing a foundation for future inter-room gunshot localization work. The proposed system uses GSound-SIR, a geometric acoustics engine, to simulate sound propagation in both of the rooms. Transmission loss is determined with pyva, a structural acoustics library implementing diffuse-field infinite-plate theory. Py auralizer is used to generate impulse responses for each room. This work stands as a forefront of indoor acoustics as our pipeline can determine the direction of arrival of incoming sounds passing through the wall barrier. Experimental results show physically ordered transmission ratios across materials: drywall yields a peak amplitude transmission ratio of 20.0% relative to the source room, compared to 6.4% for concrete, a difference of approximately 10 dB in broadband attenuation. This is consistent with concrete’s greater mass and stiffness providing stronger sound isolation. The simulation framework provides a foundation for data-driven, multi-room gunshot localization systems and represents a novel contribution to the acoustic modeling of inter-room sound transmission in building environments.

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