Experiments on direction finding in a model of acoustic perception

Any credible model of hearing must have the ability, instantaneously and simultaneously, to extract meaning from all acoustic emissions in the acoustic environment. A major requirement is to estimate direction of arrival (DOA) in a way that gives continuous perception of the locations of environmental signal sources in association with visual and tactile senses. The lack of success of conventional methods in meeting these requirements shows the need for another approach for both DOA and acoustic signal processing. This paper describes a new method that treats DOA as an integral function in the perception of meaning in the signal waveform. Estimation of DOA in conjunction with signal content such as timbre and periodicity are demonstrated using the cocktail party effect as an example. The object of this paper is to show (1) that DOA can be obtained for each halfwave of the signal waveform, (2) that DOA measurements may be clustered in association with each emitter location, and (3) that there is sufficient information in the clustered data to characterize each acoustic source