In many speech communication applications, robust localization and tracking of multiple speakers in noisy and\nreverberant environments are of major importance. Several algorithms to tackle this problem have been proposed in\nthe last decades. In this paper, we propose several extensions to a recently presented joint direction of arrival (DOA)\nand pitch estimation method, increasing its robustness in multi-speaker scenarios, noise, and reverberation. First, a\nspectral comb filter is added to the original algorithm to better cope with concurrent speakers. Second, the\nwell-known generalized cross-correlation with phase transform (GCC-PHAT) is used as an additional weighting\nfunction to improve the DOA estimation accuracy in terms of correct hits. Third, using multiple microphone pairs, the\nmulti-channel cross-correlation approach is incorporated to improve the robustness against noise and reverberation.\nIn order to improve tracking for moving and even intersecting speakers, a particle filter is used. Experiments with\nreal-world recordings in realistic acoustic conditions show that the proposed extensions increase the DOA hit rate by\nabout 33% compared to the original algorithm for two step-wise moving sources at a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of\n15 dB and a reverberation time RT60 of 560 ms.
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