Pyramic: Full Stack Open Microphone Array Architecture And Dataset

In this paper we introduce an open source and reproducible microphone array hardware design and an anechoic dataset recorded with this array. The Pyramic array has 48 microphones spread onto six identical modules connected to an FPGA-ARM combo. The arrangement of the six modules can be reconfigured to create a large number of geometries. We describe in detail the architecture of the array and make openly available all necessary hardware design files, VHDL code, and C libraries together with extensive documentation. This effectively enables replicability of part or all of the array. The curated dataset of anechoic measurements done using the Pyramic array comprises source locations with dense azimuth sampling at multiple heights, playing both test and speech signals. The manual calibration of source and microphone locations is assessed and improved upon using time-difference of arrival methods. The array response to each source location is also provided. Finally, the dataset is used to assess the performance of two well-known direction of arrival estimation algorithms on the Pyramic architecture.