US 12,306,319 B2
Method and apparatus for measuring directions of arrival of multiple sound sources
Luis Weruaga, Vienna (AT); Mathias Lehnfeld, Vienna (AT); and Stefano Bider, Vienna (AT)
Assigned to PROACTIVAUDIO GmbH, Vienna (AT)
Appl. No. 18/021,333
Filed by PROACTIVAUDIO GmbH, Vienna (AT)
PCT Filed Aug. 31, 2020, PCT No. PCT/EP2020/074197
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Feb. 14, 2023,
PCT Pub. No. WO2022/042864, PCT Pub. Date Mar. 3, 2022.
Prior Publication US 2024/0012083 A1, Jan. 11, 2024
Int. Cl. G01S 3/808 (2006.01); H04R 3/00 (2006.01)
CPC G01S 3/8083 (2013.01) [H04R 3/005 (2013.01); H04R 2201/401 (2013.01); H04R 2430/20 (2013.01)] 14 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A computer-implemented method for measuring the directions of arrival, DOAs, of acoustic signals recorded by an array of at least two microphones outputting respective audio signals, comprising:
bandpass-filtering the audio signals into at least one spectral band;
in each spectral band, for at least one pair of microphones, computing a cross-product between the audio signals of said pair, yielding a set of cross-products per spectral band;
in each spectral band, iteratively minimizing an error between the cross-product set and a model cross-product set calculated from a set of DOA estimates, wherein each DOA estimate comprises a DOA vector and a power, wherein the powers of the DOA estimates are changed with every iteration, and wherein in each iteration all those DOA estimates are removed from the DOA estimate set whose powers have a negative value;
in each spectral band, determining from the DOA estimate set those DOA estimates whose powers constitute local maxima, as DOA candidates, yielding a set of DOA candidates per spectral band;
merging the DOA candidate sets of all spectral bands into a merged DOA candidate set; and
measuring the DOAs of the acoustic signals from the merged DOA candidate set.