Development of a gunshot location detection system based on acoustic data

Determination of sound source location is a crucial problem, especially for the assault threat detection in crowded areas or military applications. The chief objective of this study is to design a microphone array to detect the location of explosion type sound sources, such as gunshot, which have significant amplitudes when compared to the background noise levels. Furthermore, the time arrival difference algorithm is utilized for the determination of time arrival differences and sound source location. Evidently, for stationary microphones that are positioned close to each other, determination of time arrival differences with high accuracy is a significant problem. Thus, a significant effort is given to enhance the accuracy of time arrival difference predictions via proper sampling. The design process of the microphone array is conducted computationally, where the sound data received by the microphones are generated. The time arrival differences are then calculated numerically, which are used for the prediction of sound source location. The number of microphones, relative positions of the microphones are determined accordingly via digital experiments. Finally, the designed microphone array is built and experiments are conducted. In conclusion, it is observed that the numerical model successfully predicts the sound source location of the computational model.