Blind Sparse-nonnegative (BSN) Channel Identification for Acousitic Time-Difference-of-Arrival Estimation

Estimating time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) remains a challenging task when acoustic environments are reverberant and noisy. Blind channel identification approaches for TDOA estimation explicitly model multipath reflections and have been demonstrated to be effective in dealing with reverberation. Unfortunately, existing blind channel identification algorithms are sensitive to ambient noise. This papers hows how to resolve the noise sensitivity issue by exploiting prior knowledge about an acoustic room impulse response (RIR), namely, an acoustic RIR can be modeled by a sparse-nonnegative FIR filter. This paper shows how to formulate a single-input two-output blind channel identification into a least square convex optimization, and how to incorporate the sparsity and nonnegativity priors so that the resulting optimization remains convex and can be solved efficiently. The proposed blind sparse-nonnegative (BSN) channel identification approach for TDOA estimation is not only robust to reverberation, but also robust to ambient noise, as demonstrated by simulations and experiments in real acoustic environments. Disciplines Electrical and Computer Engineering | Engineering Comments Suggested Citation: Lin, Y., J. Chen, Y. Kim and D.D. Lee. (2007). Blind Sparse-nonnegative (BSN) Channel Identification for Acoustic Time-Difference-of-Arrival Estimation. 2007 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics. New Paltz, New York. October 21-24, 2007. This conference paper is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/grasp_papers/53 2007 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics October 21-24, 2007, New Paltz, NY BLIND SPARSE-NONNEGATIVE (BSN) CHANNEL IDENTIFICATION FOR ACOUSTIC TIME-DIFFERENCE-OF-ARRIVAL ESTIMATION Yuanqing Lin, Jingdong Chen, Youngmoo Kim , and Daniel D. Lee GRASP Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104 Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent, 600 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ 07974 Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104 linyuanq, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]