Noise adaptive beamforming for microphone arrays

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-8929564-B2
Application number	US-201113039576-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 3, 2011
Priority date	Mar 3, 2011
Publication date	Jan 6, 2015
Grant date	Jan 6, 2015

Abstract

The subject disclosure is directed towards a noise adaptive beamformer that dynamically selects between microphone array channels, based upon noise energy floor levels that are measured when no actual signal (e.g., no speech) is present. When speech (or a similar desired signal) is detected, the beamformer selects which microphone signal to use in signal processing, e.g., corresponding to the lowest noise channel. Multiple channels may be selected, with their signals combined. The beamformer transitions back to the noise measurement phase when the actual signal is no longer detected, so that the beamformer dynamically adapts as noise levels change, including on a per-microphone basis, to account for microphone hardware differences, changing noise sources, and individual microphone deterioration.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. In a computing environment, a system comprising:
a microphone array comprising a plurality of microphones corresponding to channels that each output signals;
a mechanism coupled to the microphone array and configured to determine noise floor data for each channel;
a channel selector configured to select which channel or channels to use in signal processing based upon the noise floor data for each channel, in which the channel selector adapts dynamically…

Assignees

• Kikkeri Harshavardhana N
• Microsoft Corp

Inventors

• Kikkeri Harshavardhana N

Classifications

• G10L2021/02168

  Physics · mapped topic

• H04R3/005 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• G10L21/0216

  Physics · mapped topic

• G10L2021/02166

  Physics · mapped topic

• G10L21/02 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic