Source sound determination in horizontal plane using human ears shape microphones

Human ears play a major role in localizing the sound they hear. The pinnae, have a distinguished shape in each person and have significant impact on sound localization. The early study on sound localization, they have been used array of microphone to determine direction of the sound. There are studies that use only 2 microphones and can calculate the angle of arrival of the sound. But they cannot tell if the sound is coming from the front or the back of the microphone. To determine the direction and the location from the front or back, the pinna has been added to the microphone. This paper proposes the autocorrelation function (ACF) to determine the front or back location of the sound source. The frequencies are also used in the range of human speech with the pinna-shape microphone. The experimental results showed that the results of ACF give us the different patterns between the sound recorded from the front and sound recorded from the back side of the mannequin. Thus, the direction and location of front or back can be determine by the proposed method.