Fine landmark-based synchronization of ad-hoc microphone arrays

We use audio fingerprinting to solve the synchronization problem between multiple recordings from an ad-hoc array consisting of randomly placed wireless microphones or handheld smartphones. Synchronization is crucial when employing conventional microphone array techniques such as beam-forming and source localization. We propose a fine audio landmark fingerprinting method that detects the time difference of arrivals (TDOAs) of multiple sources in the acoustic environment. By estimating the maximum and minimum TDOAs, the proposed method can accurately calculate the unknown time offset between a pair of microphone recordings. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly improves the synchronization accuracy of conventional audio fingerprinting methods and achieves comparable performance to the generalized cross-correlation method.