An information theoretic approach for speech source enumeration

The solution of speech related problems such as source location or separation relies on a prior estimation of the number of sources. In this paper we propose a method for speech source enumeration based on the different relative delays that sources at different locations register at two microphones. The Probability Density Function (PDF) of the estimated delays exhibits peaks associated with each source. The Minimum Description Length (MDL) criterion is applied to the prediction error of a linear model fitted to the delay estimates. The method is validated for the estimation of different number of sources and different mixtures.