Performance Analysis of 3-D Direction Estimation Based on Head-Related Transfer Function

Author

Sen, Satyabrata ; Nehorai, Arye

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Syst. Eng., Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO

Volume

17

Issue

4

fYear

2009

fDate

5/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

607

Lastpage

613

Abstract

We analyze the performance of a sensor system based on the head-related transfer function (HRTF) modeling of human hearing, in finding the direction of a source in 3-D space. Thus, this system has only two sensors with a few nearby reflectors. First, we present a parametric measurement model that incorporates the diffractions associated with the head shape and the multipath reflections related to the external ear (pinna). Then, we compute the asymptotic Cramer-Rao bound on the 3-D direction estimate for a stochastic source signal of unknown parametrized spectrum. We provide a few numerical examples to illustrate our analytical results.

Keywords

audio signal processing; direction-of-arrival estimation; hearing; mean square error methods; stochastic processes; 3D direction estimation; asymptotic Cramer-Rao bound; external ear; head-related transfer function; human hearing; parametric measurement model; stochastic source signal; unknown parametrized spectrum; Auditory system; Diffraction; Ear; Humans; Performance analysis; Reflection; Sensor systems; Shape measurement; Stochastic processes; Transfer functions; 3-D direction estimation; head-related transfer function (HRTF); mean-square angular error (MSAE) bounds; multipath reflections;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1558-7916

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TASL.2008.2008235

Filename

4802169