Identification and Tracking of Active Speaker’s Position in Noisy Environments

Due to a large size of lecture theaters and associated multiple sound sources, the common beamforming techniques cannot be straightforwardly applied in those environments. Other difficulties include significant propagation delays between the microphones and the directionality mismatch between speakers and microphones. These problems are particularly emphasized in the distance lecturing environment equipped with a large scale microphone array (distance between neighboring microphones 1.86m). To reduce some of these effects, we propose a technique based upon a combination of noise reduction and active speaker tracking. Experiments in a real teleconferencing environment are provided to support the analysis.