Improvement of Range Estimation with Microphone Array

This paper presentsanew approach for the three-dimensional (3-D) localization of sound sources. An acoustic camera uses an angular beamforming to measure the Direction of Arrival (Do A) of an incoming signal, to localize the emission source. The acoustic sensor used in this article is the Brüel & Kjaer acoustic camera transformed to operate inabistatic mode. The transformation consists inaplacing of one of the microphones of the acoustic camera outside of its microphone array. This allows simultaneous estimation of the Do Aand the Time Difference of Arrival (TDo A) of the incoming signal(s). Such sensors were not found. The paper proposes emitter localization in range - cross range - elevation coordinates by combining estimates of TDo Aand Do Aand presents the signal processing method for that purpose. The range resolution of 0.2mwas achieved in an experiment. Experimental results were obtained using different emission sources. Adescription of resolution cell limitations is presented. The obtained results show acoustic noise source localization without the pre-metering of the range of the imaging plane, i.e., withoutaneed to use the additional range meter which is notapart of the acoustic camera. The latter is important in tasks of non-destructive testing.