A Real-Time Demonstrator for the 2D Localization of two Sound Sources Using Blind Adaptive MIMO System Identification

A real-time demonstrator for the 2D localization of two sound sources using two microphone pairs is presented and evaluated. The scheme relies on Blind Source Separation (BSS) to adaptively identify the acoustical MIMO system, hence allowing the estimation of relative time delays for each source and each dimension. Extending our previously presented work [1], a mechanism to solve a pairing problem occuring in the multidimensional localization of several sources is described. It exploits the inherent signal extraction abilities of BSS. Experimental evaluations with large microphone apertures show that the demonstrator can accurately localize two speech sources in a 2D space, with a precision better than one degree.