Author (s)
Herzog Adrian, Emanuël A.P. Habets
Affiliation
International Audio Laboratories Erlangen, Bayern, Germany
Publication date
2022
Abstract
Compact spherical microphone arrays are often used to record 3D sound scenes and are well suited to estimate the directions of sound sources. However, estimating the distance of a sound source is a challenging task due to the small dimensions of compact microphone arrays. In this work, different spherical harmonic domain distance estimation methods that utilize the spherical wave propagation model are investigated. Two existing methods are discussed and a new distance estimation method is proposed, which utilizes recurrence relations of spherical Hankel functions. The proposed estimator is related to the ratio between the real and imaginary components of the intensity vector for first-order spherical harmonic domain signals. In addition, a frequency averaging method is proposed and investigated for broadband distance estimation. Finally, the existing and proposed methods are evaluated using simulated anechoic and reverberant scenarios, as well as spherical microphone array recordings in outdoor and indoor environments.
Full paper
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003682X22001074
Keywords
spherical microphone arrays, sound source distance estimation, spherical harmonic domain, spherical wave propagation, hankel functions, intensity vector analysis, broadband acoustic localization