Direction of Arrival Estimation using Eigenanalysis of the Parameterized Spatial Correlation Matrix

The estimation of the direction-of-arrival (DOA) of one or more acoustic sources is an area that has generated much interest in recent years, with applications like automatic video camera steering and multi-party stereophonic teleconferencing entering the market. Time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) based methods compute each relative delay using only two microphones, even though additional microphones are usually available, and thus suffer from the effects of background noise and reverberation. This paper deals with DOA estimation based on spatial spectral estimation, and proposes a novel DOA estimator based on the eigenvalues of the parameterized spatial correlation matrix. Simulation results confirm the ability of the proposed method to provide reliable estimates even in heavily reverberant environments.