Improved Direction-of-Arrival Estimation of an Acoustic Source Using Support Vector Regression and Signal Correlation

• Main Authors: Faisal Alam, Mohammed Usman, Hend I. Alkhammash, Mohd Wajid
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-04-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: correlation coefficient; curve fitting; direction-of-arrival estimation; machine learning; microphone array; support vector regression
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/8/2692

The direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation of an acoustic source can be estimated with a uniform linear array using classical techniques such as generalized cross-correlation, beamforming, subspace techniques, etc. However, these methods require a search in the angular space and also have a higher angular error at the end-fire. In this paper, we propose the use of regression techniques to improve the results of DoA estimation at all angles including the end-fire. The proposed methodology employs curve-fitting on the received multi-channel microphone signals, which when applied in tandem with support vector regression (SVR) provides a better estimation of DoA as compared to the conventional techniques and other polynomial regression techniques. A multilevel regression technique is also proposed, which further improves the estimation accuracy at the end-fire. This multilevel regression technique employs the use of linear regression over the results obtained from SVR. The techniques employed here yielded an overall <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mrow><mn>63</mn><mo>%</mo></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula> improvement over the classical generalized cross-correlation technique.