Ray based virtual time reversal method for the localization of sound sources in reverberant fields

Localization of sound sources in reverberant fields is significant for the research areas such as noise source recognition, meeting speaker tracking system and intelligent robot design. Microphone arrays are usually used, however, in most applications in rooms it is practical and economical to reduce the number of microphones. In this paper, using only one microphone a virtual time reversal algorithm based on the ray-tracing method has been developed according to the reciprocity theorem and the time reversal invariance of linear wave equation. The algorithm has been validated by the localization experiments in a real room and a virtual room. Then the performance of the algorithm under the conditions of various reverberation time, source-receiver distance and sound reflection times has been investigated according to a specified ratio.