Robust Talker Direction Estimation Based on Weighted CSP Analysis and Maximum Likelihood Estimation

Yuki DENDA  Takanobu NISHIURA  Yoichi YAMASHITA 

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Information and Systems  Vol.E89-D  No.3  pp.1050-1057
Publication Date: 2006/03/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1361
Print ISSN: 0916-8532
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Statistical Modeling for Speech Processing)
Category: Speech Enhancement
Keyword: 
robust talker direction estimation,  CSP analysis,  CSP coefficient subtraction,  ML estimation,  microphone array, 

Full Text: PDF(1.1MB)

Summary: 
This paper describes a new talker direction estimation method for front-end processing to capture distant-talking speech by using a microphone array. The proposed method consists of two algorithms: One is a TDOA (Time Delay Of Arrival) estimation algorithm based on a weighted CSP (Cross-power Spectrum Phase) analysis with an average speech spectrum and CSP coefficient subtraction. The other is a talker direction estimation algorithm based on ML (Maximum Likelihood) estimation in a time sequence of the estimated TDOAs. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, talker direction estimation experiments were carried out in an actual office room. The results confirmed that the talker direction estimation performance of the proposed method is superior to that of the conventional methods in both diffused- and directional-noise environments.