Robust cross-correlation-based techniques for detecting and locating simultaneous , multiple sound sources

Cross-correlation-based methods have been used extensively in the task of locating multiple, simultaneous sound sources in adverse environments. In this paper, we present a low-cost prealignment enhancement to fix the temporal drawback of the cross-correlation functionals by aligning all the microphone signals to ensure they correlate to the same temporal event. We further introduce a new functional, the steered-response power of the minimum-variance distortionless response using the phase transform (MVDR-PHAT), for multiple-source detection and localization. Experimental results using real data of a 10-talker recording in an adverse room show the improvements of the proposed functional and the prealignment enhancement over traditional techniques in detecting and locating simultaneously active talkers.