Environment-aware estimation of the orientation of acoustic sources using a line array

This paper addresses the problem of estimating the orientation of an acoustic source with a line microphone array by exploiting the information provided by the multipath propagation in an enclosure. Although the device has a one-dimensional geometry, in presence of wavefronts reflected by surfaces within a room it is possible to obtain an accurate estimation of the emission point (even in terms of 3D coordinates) provided that the information conveyed by mutual delays between the arrivals of direct and reflected waves is exploited. This paper introduces a novel method that, properly modeling the multipath propagation, yields an accurate estimation of the source orientation. Experimental results obtained on real data acquired in a reverberant room as well as on synthetic data are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method and to investigate on its behavior under different environmental conditions in terms of noise and reverberation.