The detection of acoustic emissions with multiple channels and different kind of sensors (ultrasound electronic sensors and optical fiber sensors) is presented. The source localization based on the times of arrival is also carried out and different strategies for solving the location equations are compared. The most efficient strategy in terms of computational and complexity costs versus performance has been selected and the error propagation is analyzed. The errors of the acoustic emission source location (localization process) are evaluated from the errors of the times of arrival (detection process). For that, a hybrid programming architecture is proposed. It is formed by a virtual instrumentation system for the acquisition and the detection of multiple acoustic channels and an algorithms-oriented programming system for the implementation of the localization techniques (back-propagation and multiple-source separation algorithms could also be implemented in this system). Finally the communication between both systems is performed by a packet transfer protocol that allows remote operation (e.g. a local monitoring and a remote analysis and diagnosis).This work has been supported by the Spanish National Ministry of Science and Innovation, under the R&D project No. DPI 2009-14628-C03-01 and the scholarship FPI No. BES-2010-042083
