Robust adaptive acoustic vector sensor beamforming using automated diagonal loading

Abstract

In this paper, a novel robust adaptive acoustic vector sensor beamformer based on shrinkage is derived. Unlike many existing methods, the proposed method is completely automatic (or so-called user parameter-free), which means, it do not need the choice of user parameters. The proposed diagonal loading algorithms use shrinkage-based covariance matrix estimates, instead of the conventional sample covariance matrix, in the standard Capon acoustic vector sensor beamforming formulation. The numerical results show that our method is robust against errors on the steering vector and small sample sizes, and meanwhile gives high output signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR).