Location estimation of active speaker

A method of performing an estimation of a location of an active speaker in real time, the method comprising:

• designating any one microphone of an array of microphones as a reference microphone;
• storing a relative transfer function (RTF) for each microphone of the array of microphones other than the reference microphone associated with each potential location among potential locations as a set of stored RTFs;
• obtaining a voice sample of the active speaker and obtaining a speaker RTF for each microphone of the array of microphones other than the reference microphone;
• performing an RTF projection of the speaker RTF for each microphone on the set of stored RTFs;
• and
• Determining, using a processor, one of the potential locations as the location of the active speaker based on the performing the RTF projection, wherein the obtaining the speaker RTF for each microphone of the array of microphones other than the reference microphone includes computing, for each of the potential locations, a ratio of an acoustic transfer function of the voice sample at the microphone to an acoustic transfer function of the voice sample at the reference microphone.