Patent ID: 8315407

Claim:
An apparatus for localizing a sound source in real time, comprising: a sound signal acquisition unit for acquiring sound signals through two or more channels; a sample delay storage unit for storing a plurality of pieces of data, sampled from the sound signals acquired through respective channels, for a predetermined period of time; a correlation calculation unit for calculating correlations between the channels from the plurality of pieces of sampled data stored in the sample delay storage unit; and a sound source direction calculation unit for calculating an azimuth angle of the sound source using both the correlations between the channels and location relationships of the sound signal acquisition unit, a sound signal buffering unit for buffering acquired sound signals of a predetermined length; and a valid signal determination unit for determining whether the sound signals of the predetermined length buffered in the sound signal buffering unit are valid sound signals, wherein the sample delay storage unit comprises N registers with respect to each of channels of the sound signals, wherein the correlation calculation unit calculates correlations between a first channel and a second channel using the following equation: R xy = ∑ n = 0 M ⁢ ⁢ x ⁡ ( n ) ⁢ y ⁡ ( n - k ) ∑ n = 0 M ⁢ ⁢ x ⁡ ( n ) 2 ⁢ ∑ n = 0 M ⁢ ⁢ y ⁡ ( n - k ) 2 where R xy is a correlation between sound signals input through the first and second channels, x(n) and y(n) are sample addresses of the first and second channels, respectively, M is any natural number, and k is a natural number smaller than M and is a sample delay value, wherein the correlation calculation unit comprises a plurality of correlation calculators for calculating a sum of products of values stored in respective cells of registers corresponding to the first channel and a value stored in an arbitrary cell of registers corresponding to the second channel.