A novel Time Delay Estimation method in noisy and reverberant environments

In order to improve the performance of source localization in noisy and reverberant environments, a novel Time Delay Estimation (TDE) method is proposed in this paper. This method is called Acoustical Transfer Function Ratio based on Statistical Model (ATFR-SM). In our algorithm, the noise reduction method based on the statistical model is adopted to reduce the effect of noise on Acoustical Transfer Function (ATF). In the ATF method, the Power Spectral Density (PSD) is whitened to reduce the effect of reverberations. Voice Activity Detection (VAD) is used to distinguish the speech period from the noise period, and the TDE is performed in the speech period to improve the estimation accuracy. The results of performance evaluation show that, in both the noisy and reverberant conditions, the lower Percentage of Abnormal Points (PAP) and lower Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) can be achieved by the proposed method than the reference methods.