An Adaptive Time Delay Estimation Method Based on Canonical Correlation Analysis

The localization of sources has a numerous number of applications. To estimate the position of sources, the relative delay between two or more received signals for the direct signal must be determined. Although the generalized cross-correlation method is the most popular technique, an approach based on eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) is also popular one, which utilizes an eigenvector of the minimum eigenvalue. The performance of the eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) based method degrades in the low SNR and the correlated environments, because it is difficult to select a single eigenvector for the minimum eigenvalue. In this paper, we propose a new adaptive algorithm based on Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) in order to extend the operation range to the lower SNR and the correlation environments. The proposed algorithm uses the eigenvector corresponding to the maximum eigenvalue in the generalized eigenvalue decomposition (GEVD). The estimated eigenvector contains all the information that we need for time delay estimation. We have performed simulations with uncorrelated and correlated noise for several SNRs, showing that the CCA based algorithm can estimate the time delays more accurately than the adaptive EVD algorithm.