A two-stage approach for passive sound source localization based on the SRP-PHAT algorithm

Abstract

This paper presents a different approach to tackle the Sound Source Localization (SSL) problem apply on a compact microphone array that can be mounted on top of a small moving robot in an indoor environment. Sound source localization approaches can be categorized into the three main categories; Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA), high-resolution subspace-based methods, and steered beamformer-based methods. Each method has its limitations according to the search or application requirements. Steered beamformer-based method will be used in this paper because it has proven to be robust to ambient noise and reverberation to a certain extent. The most successful and used algorithm of this method is the SRP-PHAT algorithm. The main limitation of SRP-PHAT algorithm is the computational burden resulting from the search process, this limitation comes from searching among all possible candidate locations in the searching space for the location that maximizes a certain function. The aim of this paper is to develop a computationally viable approach to find the coordinate location of a sound source with acceptable accuracy. The proposed approach comprises two stages: the first stage contracts the search space by estimating the Direction of Arrival (DoA) vector from the time difference of arrival with an addition of reasonable error coefficient around the vector to make sure that the sound source locates inside the estimated region, the second stage is to apply the SRP-PHAT algorithm to search only in this contracted region for the source location. The AV16.3 corpus was used to evaluate the proposed approach, extensive experiments have been carried out to verify the reliability of the approach. The results showed that the proposed approach was successful in obtaining good results compared to the conventional SRP-PHAT algorithm.

Audiovisual Tracking of Multiple Speakers in Smart Spaces

“…In audio localization, the most common approach is to compute the Generalized Cross-Correlation function ( ) between pairs of microphones to generate an acoustic activation map with Steered Response Power ( ) strategies, usually combined with the PHAT transform [ 20 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 ].The audio likelihood model thus obtained is then associated with the acoustic map. The spatial resolution of these methods strongly depends on the array geometry, and for small microphone arrays (short distance between microphones, compared to the search space area), presents a wide active response (low resolution), mainly in radial distance from the source [ 17 ].…”

Direction of arrival estimation for indoor environments based on acoustic composition model with a single microphone

“…Broadly, the existing localization methods can be divided into four main categories: a) time difference of arrival (TDOA) estimation based methods [16,17,25,26,27]; b) subspace-based methods adapted from classical spectrum estimation theory, such as multiple signal classification (MUSIC) [28,29,30,31] and estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance (ESPRIT) algorithms [32]; c) steered-response power (SRP) based methods [33,34,35]; d) independent component analysis (ICA) based methods [36,37,38,39,40]. Time difference of arrival (TDOA) is widely used for single source localization [41].…”

“…The main idea of the SRP is to steer the microphone array to all possible candidate source locations and find one where the response power is highest, typically using some frequency weighting. Furthermore, SRP with phase transform (SRP-PHAT) algorithm is also used for sound source localization [34,35], which features robustness in noisy and reverberant environments. Although SRP based methods can provide excellent DOA estimation accuracy, two important problems prevent their widespread use in DOA estimation: a) computational cost due to performing a time-consuming search process over some space [47,33], and b) robustness to additive noise [45].…”

Research on Door-Opening Strategy Design of Mobile Manipulators Based on Visual Information and Azimuth

“…e teaching program is generally adapted to the fixed tasks it corresponds to, and its reusability is poor. erefore, a new control strategy is needed to improve the accuracy, speed, flexibility, smoothness of motion, system stability, etc., of the robotic arm, so as to improve the efficiency of the robotic arm [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9].…”