Reliability criteria evaluation for TDOA estimates in a variety of real environments

Time delay estimates in microphone pairs are commonly used for acoustic sound source localization. In real environments, the reliability of time delay estimates quickly degrades for increasing noise or room reverberation levels. The paper presents two computationally non-demanding criteria to determine the reliability of time delay estimates. The criteria are evaluated for real data in a variety of acoustic environments with different reverberation and noise levels. The results show the generality of the proposed reliability indicators in delivering information on the credibility of the current time delay estimate for many typical room environments.