Speaker localization using microphone array in a reverberant room

The paper presents a simple multivariate optimization algorithm for the maximum likelihood estimation of the direction-of-arrival of an acoustic source using a linear microphone array in the presence of multipath propagation. In the algorithm, a wideband acoustic signal is decomposed by the discrete Fourier transform, and then the optimal steering vectors are selected using an iterative process. At each iteration, the previously selected steering vectors are expanded, based on their corresponding signal energy coefficients. Subsequently, a new energy estimate is obtained from the previous one by the steepest-descent method under some constraints derived from practical assumptions. Finally, computer simulation results are presented to demonstrate its performance.