A New Initialization Method for Frequency-Domain Blind Source Separation Algorithms

Frequency-domain blind source separation (BSS) techniques have been proposed with the objective of increasing the speed and/or reducing the computational complexity of conventional algorithms, mainly for applications that involve large convolutive mixture filters. In this letter, we present a new initialization method for frequency-domain BSS algorithms employing estimates of the directions of arrival and time-frequency masking, that outperforms the classical pre-whitening initialization technique. Performance and convergence time results of the proposed approach are presented using a frequency-domain BSS algorithm that exploits higher-order frequency dependencies, employing real conference room recordings and simulated data.