Robust Audio Zoom for Surveillance Systems: A Beamforming Approach with Reduced Microphone Array

This paper presents a delay and sum beamforming audio zoom method for addressing broken microphones in video surveillance systems. The proposed approach utilises a reduced array of 13 omnidirectional microphones and applies delay and sum beamforming to enhance audio signals from a user-defined grid area. The system enables audio zooming, focusing on specific directions, and is valuable for video surveillance applications. The MATLAB-based script includes a polar plot to visualise the beamforming direction and compares the response of the 13-microphone array with the full 16-microphone array after beamforming. Experimental results demonstrate the system's effectiveness in overcoming microphone failures in surveillance scenarios.