Multi-task wireless acoustic sensor network for node-specific speech enhancement and DOA estimation

We consider the design of a distributed algorithm that is suitable for a wireless acoustic sensor network formed by nodes solving multiple tasks (MDMT). In the network, some of the nodes aim at estimating the node-specific direction-of-arrival of some desired sources. Additionally, there are other nodes that aim at implementing either a multi-channel Wiener filter or a minimum variance distortionless response beamformer in order to estimate node-specific desired signals as they impinge on their microphones. By using compressive filter-and-sum operations that incorporate a low-rank approximation of the sensor signal correlation matrix, the proposed MDMT algorithm let the nodes cooperate to achieve the network-wide centralized solution of their node-specific estimation problems without any knowledge about the tasks of other nodes. Finally, the effectiveness of the algorithm is shown through computer simulations.