Microphone Array Source Localization Using Realizable Delay Vectors

This paper presents an alternative approach to acoustic source localization which modifies the traditional two-step localization procedure to not require explicit time-delay estimates. Instead, the cross-correlation functions derived from various microphone pairs are simultaneously maximized over a set of potential delay combinations consistent with candidate source locations. The result is a procedure that combines the advantages offered by the phase transform (PHAT) weighting (or any reasonable cross-correlation-type function) and a more robust localization procedure without dramatically increasing computational load. Simulations are performed across a range of reverberation conditions to illustrate the utility of the proposed method relative to conventional generalized cross-correlation (GCC) filtering approaches and a more modern eigenvalue-based technique.