Speaker localization and its application to time delay estimators for multi-microphone speech enhancement systems

A time delay estimator for a multi-microphone speech enhancement system with 16 microphones is presented. It is based on a generalized cross-correlator and an improved peak detector. The problems associated with delay estimation in noisy speech signals are solved by performing a speaker localization and a plausibility check of the time delays derived from the speaker position. By applying these techniques to the time delay estimator, a significant reduction of the computational load is achieved, and the TDOA estimation errors are reduced.