Beamforming and its applications in steered-response power (SRP) technology, such as steered-response power delay and sum (SRP-DAS) and steered-response power phase transform (SRP-PHAT), are widely used in sound source localization. However, their resolution and accuracy still need improvement. A novel beamforming method combining SRP and multi-channel cross-correlation coefficient (MCCC), SRP-MCCC, is proposed in this paper to improve the accuracy of direction of arrival (DOA). Directional weight (DW) is obtained by calculating the MCCC. Based on DW, suppressed the non-incoming wave direction and gained the incoming wave direction to improve the beamforming capabilities. Then, sound source localizations based on the dual linear array under different conditions were simulated. Compared with SRP-PHAT, SRP-MCCC has the advantages of high positioning accuracy, strong spatial directivity and robustness under the different signal–noise ratios (SNRs). When the SNR is −10 dB, the average positioning error of the single-frequency sound source at different coordinates decreases by 5.69%, and that of the mixed frequency sound sources at the same coordinate decreases by 5.77%. Finally, the experimental verification was carried out. The results show that the average error of SRP-MCCC has been reduced by 8.14% and the positioning accuracy has been significantly improved, which is consistent with the simulation results. This research provides a new idea for further engineering applications of sound source localization based on beamforming.

Sound source target localization is an extremely useful technique that is currently utilized in many fields. The Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) interference target localization method based on sound fields is not accurate enough for localization at low signal-to-noise ratios (below 0 dB). To address this problem, this paper introduces Minimum Variance Distortionless Response (MVDR) beamforming and proposes a new MVDR-HBT algorithm. Specifically, for narrowband signals, the inverse of the correlation matrix of the sound signal is calculated, and a guiding vector is constructed to compute the MVDR direction weights. These direction weights are then used to weight the correlation function of the HBT algorithm. Subsequently, the MVDR-HBT algorithm is extended from narrowband signals to broadband signals. As a result, the directivity of the HBT algorithm is optimized for wide- and narrowband signals, resulting in improved localization accuracy. Finally, the target localization accuracy of the MVDR-HBT algorithm is analyzed through simulation and localization experiments. The results show that the MVDR-HBT algorithm can accurately determine the direction of a sound source, with localization errors at different positions that are smaller than those produced by HBT. The localization performance of MVDR-HBT is considerably better than that of HBT, further verifying the simulation results. This study provides a new idea for target localization within an acoustic propagation medium (air).