A hybrid algorithm for robust acoustic source localization in noisy and reverberant environments
Ramesh Rajagopalan, Timothy Dessonville · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2014
Acoustic source localization using microphone arrays is widely used in videoconferencing and surveillance systems. However, it still remains a challenging task to develop efficient algorithms for accurate estimation of source location using distributed data processing. In this work, we propose a new algorithm for efficient localization of a speaker in noisy and reverberant environments such as videoconferencing. We propose a hybrid algorithm that combines generalized cross correlation based phase transform method (GCC-PHAT) and Tabu search to obtain a robust and accurate estimate of the speaker location. The Tabu Search algorithm iteratively improves the time difference of arrival (TDOA) estimate of GCC-PHAT by examining the neighboring solutions until a convergence in the TDOA value is obtained. Experiments were performed based on real world data recorded from a meeting room in the presence of noise such as computer and fans. Our results demonstrate that the proposed hybrid algorithm outperforms GCC-PHAT especially when the noise level is high. This shows the robustness of the proposed algorithm in noisy and realistic videoconferencing systems.