Real-time sound localization using field-programmable gate arrays

Abstract

This paper presents a single FPGA implementation of a real-time sound localization system using two microphones. The implementation, utilizing a cross-correlation technique based on a modified version of the phase transform, successfully localizes sound sources in noisy environments with as low an SNR as 10 dB. Using the same algorithm and similar hardware architecture, it is shown that up to 5 parallel systems (using 10 microphones), all real-time, can be implemented on a single FPGA while only utilizing an estimated 77 mW-108 mW per microphone.