Direction of arrival estimation based on nonlinear microphone array

This paper describes a new method for estimating the direction of arrival (DOA) using a nonlinear microphone array based on complementary beamforming. Complementary beamforming is based on two types of beamformers designed to obtain complementary directivity patterns each other. In this system, since the resultant directivity pattern is proportional to the product of these directivity patterns, the proposed method can be used to estimate DOAs even when the number of sound sources is equal to or exceeds that of microphones. First, DOA-estimation experiments are performed using actual devices in real acoustic environments. The results clarify that DOA estimation for two sound sources can be accomplished by the proposed method with only two microphones. Also, by comparing the resolutions of DOA estimation by the proposed method and by the conventional minimum variance method, we can show that the performance of the proposed method is superior to that of the conventional method.