New GCC-TDOA Compensation Method Combined with the Wavelet Threshold Filtering

Sound source localization is a crucial technology for the robot auditory system. The commonly used Generalized Cross-Correlation time delay of arrival (GCC-TDOA) method in sound localization easily is affected by the sampling rate, resulting in the time delay leakage. Therefore, this article proposes a compensation method for the TDOA estimations based on signal sample differences, aiming to address this issue. This method employs the first derivative of the signal itself and the sample difference between two signals to obtain the compensation value for the TDOA estimations. Additionally, an improved wavelet filtering method with a new threshold function is introduced to enhance the accuracy of the TDOA estimations in the noisy environment. Simulation results show that under the same conditions, the proposed GCC-TDOA method has higher real-time performance, accuracy, and robustness. Moreover, the denoising performance of the new wavelet threshold function is better than that of the soft and hard threshold functions, as well as the two currently better performing threshold functions.