Development of a Location estimation System for Minute Sound Source by Using Human Acoustic System with Stochastic Resonance

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop a system that enables location estimation of a small sound source. The location estimation of a small sound source has some difficulties such as high computational costs or disturbances from the ambient noises and reflected waves. The proposed system is composed of a biologically-inspired system which uses a hearing mechanism based on the human auditory model and a mechanism for perceiving weak sound signals that use stochastic resonance. The location estimation mechanism in the proposed system is based on the time-lag detecting architecture. On the other hand, the stochastic resonance mechanism can pick up the small sound signals among the ambient noises. Using this proposed system, we implemented the location estimation of the small sound source through hardware experiments. Good results were obtained for the small sound source location estimation.