A Feasibility Study of Home Services Using a Microphone Array Network

The home network system (HNS), which provides value-added services by orchestrating networked home appliances, equipments and sensors, attracts great attention to realize the next-generation smart home. Implementing the location-aware services within the the HNS context is one of greatest challenges, where the appropriate services are performed based according to the location of the inhabitants. We have been studying the technologies of sound source localization and sound source separation using networked multiple microphone arrays. In this paper, we conduct a feasibility study of applying the microphone array network to the location-aware services within the HNS. Specifically, we first present three kinds of home services using illustrative examples. We then enumerate three kinds of requirements (accuracy requirement, installation requirement, user requirement), which are essential for implementing the location-aware home services using the microphone array network. In a preliminary experiment, we evaluate the accuracy requirement using an actual microphone array. Moreover, we conduct a directivity shape simulation assuming multiple arrays.