Hearing the shape of a room

PMCID: PMC3725052The final published version of this article can be found here: www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.130993211

On the effect of SNR and superdirective beamforming in speaker diarisation in meetings

This paper examines the effect of sensor performance on speaker diarisation in meetings and investigates the use of more advanced beamforming techniques, beyond the typically employed delay-sum beamformer, for mitigating the effects of poorer sensor performance. We present superdirective beamforming and investigate how different time difference of arrival (TDOA) smoothing and beamforming techniques influence the performance of state-of-the-art diarisation systems. We produced and transcribed a new corpus of meetings recorded in the instrumented meeting room using a high SNR analogue and a newly developed low SNR digital MEMS microphone array (DMMA.2). This research demonstrates that TDOA smoothing has a significant effect on the diarisation error rate and that simple noise reduction and beamforming schemes suffice to overcome audio signal degradation due to the lower SNR of modern MEMS microphones. Index Terms — Speaker diarisation in meetings, digital MEMS microphone array, time difference of arrival (TDOA), superdirective beamforming 1

Noise cancellation over spatial regions using adaptive wave domain processing

This paper proposes wave-domain adaptive processing for noise cancellation within a large spatial region. We use fundamental solutions of the Helmholtz wave-equation as basis functions to express the noise field over a spatial region and show the wave-domain processing directly on the decomposition coefficients to control the entire region. A feedback control system is implemented, where only a single microphone array is placed at the boundary of the control region to measure the residual signals, and a loudspeaker array is used to generate the anti-noise signals. We develop the adaptive wave-domain filtered-x least mean square algorithm. Simulation results show that using the proposed method the noise over the entire control region can be significantly reduced with fast convergence in both free-field and reverberant environmentsThanks to Australian Research Councils Discovery Projects funding scheme (project no. DP140103412). The work of J. Zhang was sponsored by the China Scholarship Council with the Australian National University

Pilot Optimization and Channel Estimation for Multiuser Massive MIMO Systems

This paper proposes novel pilot optimization and channel estimation algorithm for the downlink multiuser massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system with $K$ decentralized single antenna mobile stations (MSs), and time division duplex (TDD) channel estimation which is performed by utilizing $N$ pilot symbols. The proposed algorithm is explained as follows. First, we formulate the channel estimation problem as a weighted sum mean square error (WSMSE) minimization problem containing pilot symbols and introduced variables. Second, for fixed pilot symbols, the introduced variables are optimized using minimum mean square error (MMSE) and generalized Rayleigh quotient methods. Finally, for $N=1$ and $N=K$ settings, the pilot symbols of all MSs are optimized using semi definite programming (SDP) convex optimization approach, and for the other settings of $N$ and $K$, the pilot symbols of all MSs are optimized by applying simple iterative algorithm. When $N=K$, it is shown that the latter iterative algorithm gives the optimal pilot symbols achieved by the SDP method. Simulation results confirm that the proposed algorithm achieves less WSMSE compared to that of the conventional semi-orthogonal pilot symbol and MMSE channel estimation algorithm which creates pilot contamination.Comment: Accepted in CISS 2014 Conferenc

Fuzzy Chance-constrained Programming Based Security Information Optimization for Low Probability of Identification Enhancement in Radar Network Systems

In this paper, the problem of low probability of identification (LPID) improvement for radar network systems is investigated. Firstly, the security information is derived to evaluate the LPID performance for radar network. Then, without any prior knowledge of hostile intercept receiver, a novel fuzzy chance-constrained programming (FCCP) based security information optimization scheme is presented to achieve enhanced LPID performance in radar network systems, which focuses on minimizing the achievable mutual information (MI) at interceptor, while the attainable MI outage probability at radar network is enforced to be greater than a specified confidence level. Regarding to the complexity and uncertainty of electromagnetic environment in the modern battlefield, the trapezoidal fuzzy number is used to describe the threshold of achievable MI at radar network based on the credibility theory. Finally, the FCCP model is transformed to a crisp equivalent form with the property of trapezoidal fuzzy number. Numerical simulation results demonstrating the performance of the proposed strategy are provided

Spatio-spectral analysis on the unit sphere

This thesis is focussed on the development of new signal processing techniques to analyse signals defined on the sphere. Analysis and processing of signals defined on the sphere find applications in various fields of science and engineering, such as cosmology, geophysics and medical imaging. The objective to develop new signal processing methods is served by formulating, extending and tailoring existing Euclidean domain signal processing theories in ways that they become suitable for analysis of signals defined on the sphere. The first part of this thesis develops a new type of convolution between two signals on the sphere. This is the first type of convolution on the sphere which is commutative. Two other advantages, in comparison with existing definitions in the literature, are that the new convolution admits anisotropic filters and signals and the domain of the output remains on the sphere. The spectral analysis of the convolution is provided and a fast algorithm for efficient computation of convolution output is developed. The second part of the thesis is focused on the development of signal processing techniques to analyse signals on the sphere in joint spatio-spectral~(spatial-spectral) domain. A transform analogous to short-time Fourier transform(STFT) in time-frequency analysis is formulated for signals defined on the sphere, in order to devise a spatio-spectral representation of a signal. The proposed transform is referred as the spatially localized spherical harmonic transform~(SLSHT) and is defined as windowed spherical harmonic transform, resulting in the SLSHT distribution. The properties of the SLSHT distribution and its analysis in the spherical harmonic domain are also provided. Furthermore, examples are provided to demonstrate the capability of SLSHT to reveal spatially localized spectral contents in a signal that were not obtainable from traditional spherical harmonics analysis. With the consideration that data-sets on the sphere can be of considerable size and the SLSHT is intrinsically computationally demanding depending on the band-limits of the signal and window, a fast algorithm for the efficient computation of the transform is developed. The floating point precision numerical accuracy of the fast algorithm is demonstrated and a full numerical complexity analysis is presented. A general framework for spatially-varying spectral filtering of signals defined on the unit sphere is also developed, as an analogy to joint time-frequency filtering. For spatio-spectral filtering, the spherical signals are first mapped from the spatial domain into a joint spatio-spectral domain using SLSHT, where a spatio-spectral signal transformation or modification is introduced. Next, a suitable scheme to transform the modified signal from the spatio-spectral domain back to an admissible signal in the spatial domain using the least squares approach is proposed. It is shown that the overall action of the SLSHT and spatio-spectral signal modification can be described through a single transformation matrix, which is useful in practice. Finally, two specific and useful instances of spatially-varying spectral filtering are presented, defined through multiplicative and convolutive modification of the SLSHT distribution. The proposed framework enables filtering or modification in the spatio-spectral domain which cannot be carried out in either the spatial or spectral domain