Multidimensional Localization of Multiple Sound Sources Using Blind Adaptive MIMO System Identification

The TDOA-based acoustic source localization approach is a powerful and widely-used method which can be applied for one source in several dimensions or several sources in one dimension. However the localization turns out to be more challenging when multiple sound sources should be localized in multiple dimensions, due to a spatial ambiguity phenomenon which requires to perform an intermediate step after the TDOA estimation and before the calculation of the geometrical source positions. In order to obtain the required set of TDOA estimates for the multidimensional localization of multiple sound sources, we apply a recently presented TDOA estimation method based on blind adaptive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system identification. We demonstrate that this localization method also provides valuable side information which allows us to resolve the spatial ambiguity without any prior knowledge about the source positions. Furthermore we show that the blind adaptive MIMO system identification allows a high spatial resolution. Experimental results for the localization of two sources in a two-dimensional plane show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme