Optimum Placement of Microphone Array for Sound Capture Using Genetic Algoritms

This paper presents a new method based on genetic algorithm for the optimum placement of microphone arrays for high-quality sound pickup. Microphone arrays are being used for the purposes of direction-of-arrival estimation and tracking of sound sources as well as high quality sound capture by focusing on a source. The placement of microphones has direct effect on the sound quality acquired. The method proposed in this paper uses a metric function that takes this effect into account and optimizes this function for a signal source and several noise sources within a predefined two-dimensional region considering practical microphone placement constraints. With the employment of genetic algorithm on this problem, the method is easily applicable to any arbitrary region and the practical constraints on the placement of microphones are taken into account from the design level