Asynchronous Microphone Array Calibration using Hybrid TDOA Information

Asynchronous microphone array calibration is a prerequisite for many audition robot applications. A popular solution to the above calibration problem is the batch form of Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM), using the time difference of arrival measurements between two microphones (TDOA-M), and the robot (which serves as a moving sound source during calibration) odometry information. In this paper, we introduce a new form of measurement for microphone array calibration, i. e. the time difference of arrival between adjacent sound events (TDOA-S) with respect to the microphone channels. We propose to use TDOA-S and TDOA-M, called hybrid TDOA, together with odometry measurements for bath SLAM-based calibration of asynchronous microphone arrays. Extensive simulation and real-world experiments show that our method is more independent of microphone number, less sensitive to initial values (when using off-the-shelf algorithms such as Gauss-Newton iterations), and has better calibration accuracy and robustness under various TDOA noises. Simulation results also demonstrate that our method has a lower Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for microphone parameters. To benefit the community, we open-source our code and data at https://github.com/AISLAB-sustech/Hybrid-TDOA-Calib.

Authors

• Chengjie Zhang
• Jiang Wang
• He Kong

Keywords

• Simultaneous localization and mapping
• Accuracy
• Time difference of arrival
• Noise
• Microphone arrays
• Time measurement
• Robustness
• Calibration
• Odometry
• Arrays
• Microphone Array
• Simulation Results
• New Forms
• Extensive Simulations
• Real-world Experiments
• Sound Source
• Calibration Measurements
• Sound Effects
• Cramer-Rao Lower Bound
• Calibration Problem
• Unbiased
• Least-squares
• Maximum Likelihood Estimation
• Loss Of Generality
• Gaussian Noise
• Nonlinear Least Squares
• Calibration Method
• Sound Localization
• Gauss-Newton Method
• Fisher Information Matrix
• Calibration Signal
• Temporal Frame
• Multiple Arrays
• Trajectories In Space