Acoustic Source Localization via Subspace Based Method Using Small Aperture MEMS Arrays

Abstract

Small aperture microphone arrays provide many advantages for portable devices and hearing aid equipment. In this paper, a subspace based localization method is proposed for acoustic source using small aperture arrays. The effects of array aperture on localization are analyzed by using array response (array manifold). Besides array aperture, the frequency of acoustic source and the variance of signal power are simulated to demonstrate how to optimize localization performance, which is carried out by introducing frequency error with the proposed method. The proposed method for 5 mm array aperture is validated by simulations and experiments with MEMS microphone arrays. Different types of acoustic sources can be localized with the highest precision of 6 degrees even in the presence of wind noise and other noises. Furthermore, the proposed method reduces the computational complexity compared with other methods.

Design of a Direction-of-Arrival Estimation Method Used for an Automatic Bearing Tracking System

“…Although the small aperture makes the sensor portable and hard to discover, it would exacerbate the spatial resolution loss of the narrowband methods [ 13 , 15 ]. Inspired by the wideband methods, we try to choose a sub-band from the wideband signal for the DOA estimation to get a high spatial resolution and discard the focusing transformation to save more computational resource.…”

“…However, despite a high spatial resolution for the narrowband signals, the resolution will suffer much loss for the signals of vehicles which are not narrowband [ 11 , 12 ]. Furthermore, the small aperture of the microphone array used on the UGS would also exacerbate this problem [ 13 , 14 , 15 ].…”

A Robust Real Time Direction-of-Arrival Estimation Method for Sequential Movement Events of Vehicles

“…Recently, a small aperture MEMS microphone array system has been introduced in our earlier work [ 15 ] for direction finding for the sequential movement events of vehicles. Moreover, we have conducted a series of researches about small aperture microphone arrays and obtained some positive results, for example, acoustic target intrusion detection method [ 16 , 17 ], acoustic target classification method [ 18 ], and acoustic source localization method [ 19 , 20 ]. However, the robustness of these methods needs to be further improved in the field, especially under the influence of wind noise.…”

Using a Planar Array of MEMS Microphones to Obtain Acoustic Images of a Fan Matrix

“…Arrays of MEMS microphones are specially designed for acoustic source localization [13][14][15]; however, they are also used in other applications such as DOA (Direction Of Arrival) estimation for vehicles in motion [16], speech processing [17,18], turbulence measurements [19], identifying geometric dimensions and internal defects of concrete structures [20], or acoustic imaging [21][22][23]. Due to the high diversity of the applications of these arrays, the authors try to widen these uses to other fields, such as the industrial one.…”