Microphone array signal processing with application in three-dimensional spatial hearing

Abstract

Microphone arrays are known to enhance the directionality and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over single-channel sensors. This is considered beneficial in many applications such as video-conferencing systems and hearing aids. However, this advantage comes at the price of the sensation of spatial hearing. The spatial cues due to diffractions of the head and torso are lost if the array is not fitted in the ears. In this paper we present a system that incorporates binaural hearing synthesis into array signal processing, in an attempt to recover the three-dimensional sound image that a human listener would naturally perceive. In the system, the superdirective beamformer is exploited to estimate the direction of arrival (DOA) of the incoming sound. The spatial sound image is restored by steering the beam to the direction found in the DOA session and filtering the array output with the corresponding Head Related Transfer Functions (HRTF). The algorithms have been implemented in real-time fashion using a digital signal processor. Objective and subjective experiments were performed to validate the proposed system. The experimental results showed that the accurate localization of the sound source is achievable using the array system. (c) 2005 Acoustical Society of America.