Blind source separation based on binaural ICA

We newly propose a novel blind separation framework for binaural acoustic signals based on the extended ICA algorithm, binaural ICA (BICA). The BICA consists of multiple ICA and fidelity controller, and each ICA runs in parallel under the control of the fidelity of the whole separation system. The BICA can separate the mixed signals into not monaural source signals but binaurally heard signals of independent sources. Thus, the separated signals of BICA can maintain spatial qualities of each sound source. In order to evaluate its effectiveness, separation experiments are carried out under a reverberant condition. The experimental results reveal that (1) the signal separation performance of the proposed BICA is the same as that of the conventional ICA-based method; and (2) the spatial quality of the separated sound in BICA is remarkably superior to that of the conventional method, especially for the fidelity of the sound reproduction.