Direction-of-arrival estimation using a microphone array with the multichannel cross-correlation method

In this paper, the performance of a multichannel cross-correlation algorithm for the estimation of the direction of-arrival (DOA) of an acoustic source in the presence of significant levels of both noise and reverberation is presented. Microphone arrays are being utilized in many different areas from consumer electronics to military systems. Noise reduction, speech recognition, hands-free communication, automatic video camera steering and multiparty teleconferencing are some of the applications being studied. Methods based on the time-differences-of-arrival (TDOA) between two microphones are commonly used to determine the direction of an acoustic source. The performance of TDOA algorithms typically deteriorates significantly due to noise and multipath propagation. This paper deals with the DOA problem emphasizing the performance in noisy and reverberant environments. The multichannel cross-correlation coefficient (MCCC) is used to estimate the DOA and the performance of the MCCC algorithm is investigated. Simulations and initial experimental results confirm that the DOA estimation robustness is suitable for practical applications if arrays with an appropriate number of microphones are used.