General direction-of-arrival tracking with acoustic nodes

In this paper, we propose a particle filter acoustic direction-of-arrival (DOA) tracker to track multiple maneuvering targets using a state space approach. The particle filter determines its state vector using a batch of DOA estimates. The filter likelihood treats the observations as an image, using template models derived from the state update equation, and also incorporates the possibility of missing data as well as spurious DOA observations. The particle filter handles multiple targets, using a partitioned state-vector approach. The particle filter solution is compared with three other methods: the extended Kalman filter, Laplacian filter, and another particle filter that uses the acoustic microphone outputs directly. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these methods for our problem. In addition, we also demonstrate an autonomous system for multiple target DOA tracking with automatic target initialization and deletion. The initialization system uses a track-before-detect approach and employs the matching pursuit idea to initialize multiple targets. Computer simulations are presented to show the performances of the algorithms.