Tracking Sound Sources with Microphone Arrays and Beamforming Algorithms
Bence Csóka, Péter Fiala, Péter Rucz · 2024
Microphone arrays can be used for many purposes, this paper is concerned with the determination of the position and trajectory of moving sound sources.The estimation of the position is based on the Delay-and-Sum method, which can be used to focus on different points in space, and to create sound maps representing the source distribution.This method can be enhanced further with different beamforming algorithms, for example with Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC), or Functional Beamforming (FB).These algorithms all have their strengths and weaknesses, and their main beam width, side lobe strength, computational cost etc.must be considered.Beamforming algorithms complemented with the Kalman filter algorithm are suitable for tracking non-stationary sources as well.Our goal is to evaluate these methods through simulations and measurements.The measurement data is acquired from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) acting as sound sources in an outdoor environment with far from ideal environmental conditions.Due to this, the results indicate the efficiency and limitations of the algorithms when used in real-life applications, so that improvements can be made to the methods for increased efficiency, accuracy, and robustness.