Direction of Arrival Estimation and Localization Using Acoustic Sensor Arrays

Abstract

Sound source localization has numerous applications such as detection and localization of mechanical or structural failures in vehicles and buildings or bridges, security systems, collision avoidance, and robotic vision. The paper presents the design of an anechoic chamber, sensor arrays and an analysis of how the data acquired from the sensors could be used for sound source localization and object detection. An anechoic chamber is designed to create a clean environment which isolates the experiment from external noises and reverberation echoes. An FPGA based data acquisition system is developed for a flexible acoustic sensor array platform. Using this sensor platform, we investigate direction of arrival estimation and source localization experiments with different geometries and with different numbers of sensors. We further present a discussion of parameters that influence the sensitivity and accuracy of the results of these experiments.