An approach for solving the permutation problem in blind source separation based on microphone sub-arrays

In this paper, we present a new algorithm for solving the permutation ambiguity in convolutive blind source separation. Transformed to the frequency domain, existing algorithms can efficiently solve the reduction of the source separation problem into independent instantaneous separation in each frequency bin. However, this independency leads to the problem of correctly aligning these single bins. We present a new method for solving the permutation problem using microphone sub-arrays. It is based on the combination of two approaches: direction of arrival (DOA) estimation for sources and the inter-frequency correlation of signal envelopes. The performance of the algorithm will be demonstrated on real-world data.