Experimental study of robust beamforming techniques for acoustic applications

Yingke Zhao, Jesper Rindom Jensen, Mads Grasboll Christensen, Simon Doclo, Jingdong Chen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate robust beamforming techniques for wideband signal processing in noisy and reverberant environments. In such environments, steering vector estimation errors are inevitable, leading to a degradation of the beamformer performance. Here, we study two types of beamformers that are robust against steering vector estimation errors. The first type includes robust Capon beamformers, where the underlying principle is to add a steering vector uncertainty constraint and/or a norm constraint to the optimization problem to improve the beamformer's robustness. The second type is the amplitude and phase estimation method, which utilizes both temporal and spatial smoothing. Experiments are presented to demonstrate the performance of the considered robust beamformers in acoustic environments. The results show that the robust beamformers outperform the non-robust beamformers in terms of predicted speech quality and intelligibility for different steering vector and covariance matrix estimation errors.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2017 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, WASPAA 2017
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages86-90
Number of pages5
ISBN (Electronic)9781538616321
DOIs
StatePublished - 7 Dec 2017
Event2017 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, WASPAA 2017 - New Paltz, United States
Duration: 15 Oct 201718 Oct 2017

Publication series

NameIEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics
Volume2017-October

Conference

Conference2017 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, WASPAA 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityNew Paltz
Period15/10/1718/10/17

Keywords

  • APES beamforming
  • Capon beamforming
  • Microphone array
  • robust beamforming
  • steering vector error

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