685 research outputs found
Ad Hoc Microphone Array Calibration: Euclidean Distance Matrix Completion Algorithm and Theoretical Guarantees
This paper addresses the problem of ad hoc microphone array calibration where
only partial information about the distances between microphones is available.
We construct a matrix consisting of the pairwise distances and propose to
estimate the missing entries based on a novel Euclidean distance matrix
completion algorithm by alternative low-rank matrix completion and projection
onto the Euclidean distance space. This approach confines the recovered matrix
to the EDM cone at each iteration of the matrix completion algorithm. The
theoretical guarantees of the calibration performance are obtained considering
the random and locally structured missing entries as well as the measurement
noise on the known distances. This study elucidates the links between the
calibration error and the number of microphones along with the noise level and
the ratio of missing distances. Thorough experiments on real data recordings
and simulated setups are conducted to demonstrate these theoretical insights. A
significant improvement is achieved by the proposed Euclidean distance matrix
completion algorithm over the state-of-the-art techniques for ad hoc microphone
array calibration.Comment: In Press, available online, August 1, 2014.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165168414003508, Signal
Processing, 201
A robust sequential hypothesis testing method for brake squeal localisation
This contribution deals with the in situ detection and localisation of brake squeal in an automobile. As brake squeal is emitted from regions known a priori, i.e., near the wheels, the localisation is treated as a hypothesis testing problem. Distributed microphone arrays, situated under the automobile, are used to capture the directional properties of the sound field generated by a squealing brake. The spatial characteristics of the sampled sound field is then used to formulate the hypothesis tests. However, in contrast to standard hypothesis testing approaches of this kind, the propagation environment is complex and time-varying. Coupled with inaccuracies in the knowledge of the sensor and source positions as well as sensor gain mismatches, modelling the sound field is difficult and standard approaches fail in this case. A previously proposed approach implicitly tried to account for such incomplete system knowledge and was based on ad hoc likelihood formulations. The current paper builds upon this approach and proposes a second approach, based on more solid theoretical foundations, that can systematically account for the model uncertainties. Results from tests in a real setting show that the proposed approach is more consistent than the prior state-of-the-art. In both approaches, the tasks of detection and localisation are decoupled for complexity reasons. The localisation (hypothesis testing) is subject to a prior detection of brake squeal and identification of the squeal frequencies. The approaches used for the detection and identification of squeal frequencies are also presented. The paper, further, briefly addresses some practical issues related to array design and placement. (C) 2019 Author(s)
Self-Localization of Ad-Hoc Arrays Using Time Difference of Arrivals
This work was supported by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under Grant EP/K007491/1
Simultaneous ranging and self-positioning in unsynchronized wireless acoustic sensor networks
Automatic ranging and self-positioning is a very
desirable property in wireless acoustic sensor networks (WASNs)
where nodes have at least one microphone and one loudspeaker.
However, due to environmental noise, interference and multipath
effects, audio-based ranging is a challenging task. This paper
presents a fast ranging and positioning strategy that makes use
of the correlation properties of pseudo-noise (PN) sequences for
estimating simultaneously relative time-of-arrivals (TOAs) from
multiple acoustic nodes. To this end, a proper test signal design
adapted to the acoustic node transducers is proposed. In addition,
a novel self-interference reduction method and a peak matching
algorithm are introduced, allowing for increased accuracy in
indoor environments. Synchronization issues are removed by
following a BeepBeep strategy, providing range estimates that
are converted to absolute node positions by means of multidimensional
scaling (MDS). The proposed approach is evaluated both
with simulated and real experiments under different acoustical
conditions. The results using a real network of smartphones and
laptops confirm the validity of the proposed approach, reaching
an average ranging accuracy below 1 centimeter.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grant TIN2015-70202-P, TEC2012-37945-C02-02 and FEDER funds
Structured Sparsity Models for Multiparty Speech Recovery from Reverberant Recordings
We tackle the multi-party speech recovery problem through modeling the
acoustic of the reverberant chambers. Our approach exploits structured sparsity
models to perform room modeling and speech recovery. We propose a scheme for
characterizing the room acoustic from the unknown competing speech sources
relying on localization of the early images of the speakers by sparse
approximation of the spatial spectra of the virtual sources in a free-space
model. The images are then clustered exploiting the low-rank structure of the
spectro-temporal components belonging to each source. This enables us to
identify the early support of the room impulse response function and its unique
map to the room geometry. To further tackle the ambiguity of the reflection
ratios, we propose a novel formulation of the reverberation model and estimate
the absorption coefficients through a convex optimization exploiting joint
sparsity model formulated upon spatio-spectral sparsity of concurrent speech
representation. The acoustic parameters are then incorporated for separating
individual speech signals through either structured sparse recovery or inverse
filtering the acoustic channels. The experiments conducted on real data
recordings demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for
multi-party speech recovery and recognition.Comment: 31 page
MilliSonic: Pushing the Limits of Acoustic Motion Tracking
Recent years have seen interest in device tracking and localization using
acoustic signals. State-of-the-art acoustic motion tracking systems however do
not achieve millimeter accuracy and require large separation between
microphones and speakers, and as a result, do not meet the requirements for
many VR/AR applications. Further, tracking multiple concurrent acoustic
transmissions from VR devices today requires sacrificing accuracy or frame
rate. We present MilliSonic, a novel system that pushes the limits of acoustic
based motion tracking. Our core contribution is a novel localization algorithm
that can provably achieve sub-millimeter 1D tracking accuracy in the presence
of multipath, while using only a single beacon with a small 4-microphone
array.Further, MilliSonic enables concurrent tracking of up to four smartphones
without reducing frame rate or accuracy. Our evaluation shows that MilliSonic
achieves 0.7mm median 1D accuracy and a 2.6mm median 3D accuracy for
smartphones, which is 5x more accurate than state-of-the-art systems.
MilliSonic enables two previously infeasible interaction applications: a) 3D
tracking of VR headsets using the smartphone as a beacon and b) fine-grained 3D
tracking for the Google Cardboard VR system using a small microphone array
Localization of sound sources : a systematic review
Sound localization is a vast field of research and advancement which is used in many useful applications to facilitate communication, radars, medical aid, and speech enhancement to but name a few. Many different methods are presented in recent times in this field to gain benefits. Various types of microphone arrays serve the purpose of sensing the incoming sound. This paper presents an overview of the importance of using sound localization in different applications along with the use and limitations of ad-hoc microphones over other microphones. In order to overcome these limitations certain approaches are also presented. Detailed explanation of some of the existing methods that are used for sound localization using microphone arrays in the recent literature is given. Existing methods are studied in a comparative fashion along with the factors that influence the choice
of one method over the others. This review is done in order to form a basis for choosing the best fit method for our use
Detecting multiple, simultaneous talkers through localising speech recorded by ad-hoc microphone arrays
This paper proposes a novel approach to detecting multiple, simultaneous talkers in multi-party meetings using localisation of active speech sources recorded with an ad-hoc microphone array. Cues indicating the relative distance between sources and microphones are derived from speech signals and room impulse responses recorded by each of the microphones distributed at unknown locations within a room. Multiple active sources are localised by analysing a surface formed from these cues and derived at different locations within the room. The number of localised active sources per each frame or utterance is then counted to estimate when multiple sources are active. The proposed approach does not require prior information about the number and locations of sources or microphones. Synchronisation between microphones is also not required. A meeting scenario with competing speakers is simulated and results show that simultaneously active sources can be detected with an average accuracy of 75% and the number of active sources counted accurately 65% of the time
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