Detection and localization of weak impulses and continuous sources within the urban acoustic environment

Signal detection and localization with large aperture acoustic arrays in urban environments can be inherently difficult. This poster presents some preliminary approaches under investigation for; determining the direction of arrival of continuous sources that are changing in frequency, detecting and localizing low signal to noise ratio impulses in the presence of coherent background noise, and a fast mapping approach for converting array element delays to direction of arrival using a neural network fitting function. For uniform circular array geometries with a central reference array element, the direction of arrival of sources with changing frequency can be visualized by applying the Hilbert transform and analyzing the relative phase angle rate of change of the outer array elements. Next, various computational approaches for low level impulse detection in the presence of coherent acoustical noise are presented. Last, a neural network fitting function is discussed that performs array specific delay mapping...