Localization of 3D acoustic sources based on multiple spherical apertures

A multiple spherical arrays structure is proposed to provide an alternative design to the traditional single spherical array for the spherical harmonic decomposition, to obtain better localization performance. The new structure consists of several identical spheres in a given area, and the microphones are placed uniformly on each sphere. The spherical harmonic analysis algorithm using the multiple array structure for the problem of multiple acoustic sources localization is presented. Simulation results show that the multiple spherical arrays can provide a more accurate direction of arrival (DOA) estimation for the multiple sources than that of a single spherical array, and reduce the number of microphones on each sphere without decreasing the estimation accuracy.