Near field impulsive source localization in a noisy environment

When a machine has faults in its rotating parts, it normally generates a periodic vibration or acoustic signals. These signals are often periodic but impulsive. This paper addresses the way in which we can find out where the impulsive sources are. We propose a signal processing method that can identify an impulsive sources’ location. The method is robust with respect to noise; a spatially distributed noise. Numerical simulation and experiments are performed to verify the method. Results show that the proposed technique is quite powerful for localizing the sources in noisy environments. The method also required less microphones than the conventional beamforming method.