Acoustic Source Localization in Home Environments - The Effect of Microphone Array Geometry (Work in Progress)

Abstract:

Localization of acoustic sources is a powerful tool in different applications, for example, in quality assurance by locating the source of noise created by a machine or locating a person calling for help in ambient assisted living environments. This paper presents the first steps in the localizeIT project for acoustic source localization by simulation and comparison of different microphone array geometries to determine their effect on the localization performance. The time difference of arrival (TDOA) is used in the acoustic source localization method. The TDOA is estimated through an approximation of the phase shift of different signals calculated with the cross correlation operation. In order to find a good arrangement of microphones, a simulation is performed to compare different microphone arrangements for the presented localization method, with regard to the available space in a typical indoor environment. Those different microphone arrangements are classified into two categories: compact measuring stations positioned inside the monitored area, and larger satellite systems with microphones surrounding the monitored area. In the simulated scenario, the large satellite systems are superior to the compact measuring stations using the same number of microphones. Comparing different compact systems the results suggest, that the arrangement has a measurable and practical influence on the precision of the system.


Year: 2017
In session: Dialogsysteme
Pages: 219 to 227