VOCAL’s Angle of Arrival (AoA) Voice Activity Detection (VAD) software utilizes multiple input signals from a microphone array to determine if there is active speech in a specified direction. Even in the presence of multiple simultaneous sound sources (i.e. talkers), this software will be able to determine if the desired talker is actively speaking. The AoA VAD is useful in voice control applications where there is only one direction of arrival from which the voice should be heard, such as a driver of a car or a user of kiosk. This AoA VAD software can also be used for beamsteering and in the control logic of adaptive beamforming algorithms.
The construction of the AoA VAD algorithm is very similar to your typical AoA estimation algorithm, in that the input signals are pre-condition before being processed by a sound source localization (SSL) algorithm. The main difference in the post-processing of the SSL algorithm. The AoA VAD contains additional processing to specifically determine if the desired direction is present.
This algorithm is configurable to be used with linear, circular or any custom arrays. Adding more microphones into the system design adds redundancy and helps to improve accuracy. As one would expect, this will increase the computational complexity of the solution. Please contact us to learn more about our microphone array and acoustic scene awareness solutions.