Far field-aware SOC design for sound source location based on 0.18-µm CMOS process

In this study, we introduce a far field-aware system on a chip (SOC) design for sound source location, which is implemented with 0.18-μm CMOS process. The adopted method for the proposed system is based on average magnitude difference function (AMDF). In order to effectively detect the acoustical source in actual environment, we integrate this system with voice active detection (VAD), which can actively discover the diversity of sound voice. Furthermore, this presented structure is capable of detecting the high intensity anthropogenic sound automatically at any time. For experimental setup, we utilize a microphone pair to localize the single sound source. The performance of our proposed system can achieve 90% accuracy rate within ±5° average angle error. For source distance measurement, the identifying distance can be up to 5 meters. The far field-aware sound source location system chip occupies 2.86mm×3.56mm silicon area, and its average power consumption is 43mW.