Calibrated acoustic source localization

The localization of speech sources is critical to the proper functioning of many multiple-microphone devices. Presently, localization algorithms rely on the time-differences-of-arrival (TDOA) to extract the source location from the observed cross-correlation measurements, and view other components (non-direct-path) of the impulse responses as ldquointerference.rdquo In this paper, we propose to employ the set of reverberant impulse responses to provide diversity and hence aid in the localization of sound sources in reverberant and diffractive acoustic environments. A relationship between the cross-correlation function of the microphone outputs and the cross-correlation functions of the room impulse responses is established. This relationship is then exploited to yield location estimates which exhibit a significantly lower anomaly rate than the popular SRP-PHAT method as found in an experimental evaluation using real impulse responses.