Abstract:
A method to estimate sound source orientation in a reverberant room using a microphone array is proposed. We extend the conventional modeling of a room transfer function based on the image method in order to take into account the directivity of a sound source. With this extension, a transfer function between a sound source and a listener (or a microphone) is described by the superposition of transfer functions from each image source to the listener multiplied by the source directivity; thus, the sound source orientation can be estimated by analyzing how the image sources are distributed (power distribution of image sources) from observed signals. We applied eigenvalue analysis to the spatial correlation matrix of the microphone array observation to obtain the power distribution of image sources. Bsed on the assumption that the spatial correlation matrix for each set of source position and orientation is known a priori, the variation of the eigenspace can be modeled. By comparing the eigenspace of observed signals and that of pre-learned models, we estimated the sound source orientation. Through experiments using seven microphones, the sound source orientation was estimated with high accuracy by increasing the reverberation time of a room.
