AN ALTERNATIVE ALGORITHM FOR ESTIMATING AND TRACKING TALKER LOCATION BY MICROPHONE ARRAYS

An alternative algorithm is presented to estimate and track the domina nt talker location for microphone arrays. A focusing transformation is used only for the talker, and the time delay is estimated from the ph ase of the dominant eigenvector of the covariance matrix. The proposed algorithm is shown to be easily applied to the cases of near-field, s hort-observation-time, multiple-reflection, and interfering sources an d to be robust to small microphone channel delay perturbations. The si mulation and experimental results are given to support the proposed al gorithm.