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Time Delay Estimation in Room Acoustic Environments: An Overview

EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing volume 2006, Article number: 026503 (2006) Cite this article

Abstract

Time delay estimation has been a research topic of significant practical importance in many fields (radar, sonar, seismology, geophysics, ultrasonics, hands-free communications, etc.). It is a first stage that feeds into subsequent processing blocks for identifying, localizing, and tracking radiating sources. This area has made remarkable advances in the past few decades, and is continuing to progress, with an aim to create processors that are tolerant to both noise and reverberation. This paper presents a systematic overview of the state-of-the-art of time-delay-estimation algorithms ranging from the simple cross-correlation method to the advanced blind channel identification based techniques. We discuss the pros and cons of each individual algorithm, and outline their inherent relationships. We also provide experimental results to illustrate their performance differences in room acoustic environments where reverberation and noise are commonly encountered.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, NJ, 07974, USA

    Jingdong Chen & Yiteng(Arden) Huang

  2. INRS-EMT, Université du Québec, 800 de la Gauchetière Ouest, Suite 6900, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H5A 1K6

    Jacob Benesty

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  1. Jingdong Chen
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Correspondence to Jingdong Chen.

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Chen, J., Benesty, J. & Huang, Y. Time Delay Estimation in Room Acoustic Environments: An Overview. EURASIP J. Adv. Signal Process. 2006, 026503 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1155/ASP/2006/26503

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