Patent ID: 7835908

Claim:
An apparatus for speaker localization comprising: a difference spectrum obtaining section which obtains a difference spectrum of a first pseudo-power spectrum for a speech section and a second pseudo-power spectrum for a non-speech section detected in a voice signal output from a microphone array; and a speaker direction estimation section which detects a peak value in any one of the difference spectrum and the first pseudo-power spectrum, and estimates the direction of a speaker based on the direction angle corresponding to the detected peak value; wherein the difference spectrum obtaining section includes: a speech/non-speech section detection unit which detects a speech section from the voice signal, and by using the speech section, detects a non-speech section; a steering vector database which stores each steering vector that is obtained by using a transfer function between an actual sound source and the microphone array; a first spectrum obtaining unit which obtains a first pseudo-power spectrum by projecting the steering vector onto a basis vector in a noise subspace obtained for the speech section; a second spectrum obtaining unit which obtains a second pseudo-power spectrum by projecting the steering vector onto a basis vector in a noise subspace obtained for the non-speech section; and a subtraction unit which obtains the difference spectrum by subtracting the second pseudo-power spectrum from the first pseudo-power spectrum.