Localisation of impacts on solid objects using the Wavelet Transform and Maximum Likelihood Estimation

Publisher Summary The time difference of arrival (TDOA) method, often used for sound source localization, is not suitable for locating the source of dispersive waves. It is difficult to establish the actual time of arrival of a dispersive wave because of the dependency of its velocity on its frequency. To overcome this timing uncertainty, two novel approaches for the localization of an impulsive acoustic source in a solid object are proposed in this chapter. The wavelet transform is utilized to extract different frequency components from the recorded acoustic signals for estimation of the group velocities of the various frequencies. Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) is introduced to improve the accuracy and reliability of the localization. In the chapter, three localization methods based on these techniques are introduced and compared.