title: Robust acoustic source localization based on modal beamforming and time-frequency processing using circular microphone arrays.
abstract: Uniform circular array processing has been shown to be a very useful tool for broadband acoustic source localization over 360°. Specifically, beamforming methods based on circular harmonics have attracted a lot of research attention in the last several years, as modal array signal processing is a very active research topic. On the other hand, due to the sparsity properties of speech, source localization methods in the time-frequency (T-F) domain have also demonstrated their capability to locate several simultaneous sources with high accuracy. In this paper, a localization framework based on circular harmonics beamforming and T-F processing that provides accurate localization performance under very adverse acoustic conditions is presented. Modal processing and sparsity-based localization are jointly addressed to estimate the direction-of-arrival of multiple concurrent speech sources. Experiments in real and simulated environments with different microphone setups are discussed, showing the validity of the proposed approach and comparing its performance with other state-of-the-art methods.
authors.affiliation: I.E.E.A.C. Department, Universidad Castilla-La Mancha, 16071, Cuenca, Spain. ana.torres@uclm.es
authors.forename: Ana M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Torres
authors.forename: Maximo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cobos
authors.forename: Basilio
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pueo
authors.forename: Jose J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Lopez
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004867:Equipment Design; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009038:Motion; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio; D013016:Sound; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013997:Time Factors; D014159:Transducers; D014732:Vibration