Efficient Time Delay Estimation based on Cross-Power Spectrum Phase

Abstract

Accurate Time Delay Estimation for acoustic signals acquired in noisy and reverberant environments is an important task in many speech processing applications. The Cross-power Spectrum Phase analysis is a popular method that has been demonstrated to perform well even in moderately adverse conditions. This paper describes an efficient approach to apply it in the case of static sources. It exploits the linearity of the generalized cross-correlation to accumulate information from a plurality of frames in the time domain. This translates into a reduced computational load and a more robust estimation. Several examples drawn from real and simulated data in typical applications are discussed.