Blind alignment of asynchronously recorded signals for distributed microphone array

In this paper, aiming to utilize independent recording devices as a distributed microphone array, we present a novel method for alignment of recorded signals with localizing microphones and sources. Unlike conventional microphone array, signals recorded by independent devices have different origins of time, and microphone positions are generally unknown. In order to estimate both of them from only recorded signals, time differences between channels for each source are detected, which still include the differences of time origins, and an objective function defined by their square errors is minimized. For that, simple iterative update rules are derived through auxiliary function approach. The validity of our approach is evaluated by simulative experiment.