Localizing near and far field acoustic sources with distributed microhone arrays

In this paper, we consider near-field acoustic source localization using distributed microphone arrays. Range differences (RDs) are estimated using a recently proposed joint direction of arrival (DOA) and range estimator. The RDs are used to estimate the location of an acoustic source using a recently proposed cone-based localization method. The performance of the proposed localization method is compared to generalized cross-correlation with phase transform, and a pitch-based time difference of arrival (TDOA) estimator, using synthetic and real signals. Results show a decrease in the error of the estimated position when joint DOA and range estimation is used for RD estimation.