PC-based real-time acoustic source locator and sound capture system for teleconferencing

A PC‐based real time acoustic source locator and sound capture system has been developed. The system is implemented using Frontier Design A/D converters and the Intel Signal Processing Library directly on a 1 GHz Pentium III machine, without a DSP board. The source locator uses the cross‐power spectral phase to locate a moving talker. The algorithm also uses an energy detector that minimizes incorrect location estimates by neglecting frames with high background noise. The source locator provides 8 location estimates per second. A 16‐element 0.90 m linear delay‐sum beamformer has also been implemented in the system as a method for selective sound capture. The ability of the source locator to detect talkers in a typical office environment is evaluated. In addition, the array response is measured. [Work supported by Intel.]