A new method of tracking talker location for microphone arrays in near field

Speech recognisers are very sensitive to degradation of the acoustical environment. In order to limit the influence of noise, reverberation and interference, several strategies can be applied. A new method for tracking location (i.e., range and bearing) of a single talker of interest for microphone arrays in the very near field (the range of the talker is less than or nearly equal to the array length) is proposed. In the proposed method, an array is divided into two subarrays, focusing transformations only for the talker are used, and an iteration update is proceeded. The proposed method is suitable for cases of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or/and strong interfering signals (even it is stronger than the talker´s signal). Computer simulations are given to support the proposed method