A Miniature Four-Microphone Array for Two-Dimensional Direction-of-Arrival Estimation Based on Biomimetic Time-Delay Magnification

Abstract

A miniature microphone array based on interaural time difference (ITD) is designed. This array contains four microphones with certain arrangement and aims for two-dimensional (azimuth and elevation) direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation in the whole three-dimensional space. The array can be small because it uses a coupling algorithm that magnifies the time delay between the signals received by every two microphones. The coupling algorithm is built according to a pairwise-coupled multidimensional mechanical model inspired by the ears of the tiny parasitoid fly Ormia ochracea. It was verified that the time-delay magnification can be independent of the incident angle when the parameters in the model satisfy specific relationships. This paper further investigates the multidimensional coupled system and advocates to realize the magnification mechanism in algorithm, where the physical parameters can change according to sound frequency to ensure the time-delay magnification. Moreover, the arrangement of microphones is specially designed to help the array to achieve similar measuring accuracy for all directions in the three-dimensional space. Corresponding signal process procedures are also provided. Simulations that use such an array to estimate the azimuth and elevation angles of sound source are performed via general cross-correlation (GCC) method. Results verify the feasibility of the microphone array and show that the accuracy of the estimation increases after the signals are processed by the coupled system.