Real-World Evaluation of Multichannel Audio Enhancement Using Acoustic Pilot Signals

In reverberant environments, the performance of multichannel audio enhancement systems depends on the accuracy with which the acoustic impulse responses between sources and microphones can be estimated. Since these responses are difficult to estimate in real-world environments, many multichannel audio enhancement experiments are conducted using simulated data. We propose an experimental method that sidesteps the channel estimation problem by measuring the acoustic impulse responses using pilot signals emitted from a beacon placed near the source of interest. We demonstrate the utility of the method on a multichannel speech mixture recorded in a noisy and reverberant room.