Speech enhancing method and device, and denoising communication headphone enhancing method and device, and denoising communication headphones

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9240195-B2
Application number	US-201113637715-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 25, 2011
Priority date	Nov 25, 2010
Publication date	Jan 19, 2016
Grant date	Jan 19, 2016

Abstract

The present invention discloses a speech enhancing method, a speech enhancing device and a denoising communication headphone. In the solutions of the present invention, a first sound signal that comprises a user's speech signal transmitted through coupling vibration and an ambient noise signal transmitted through the air and a second sound signal that is mainly an ambient noise signal transmitted through the air are picked up by a primary vibration microphone and a secondary vibration microphone, respectively, that have a specific relative positional relationship therebetween, and the ambient noise signals picked up by the two vibration microphones are correlated with each other; a control parameter used to control an updating speed of an adaptive filter is determined according to the first sound signal and the second sound signal; the first sound signal is denoised and filtered according to the second sound signal and the control parameter; and the denoised and filtered speech signal is further denoised and speech high-frequency enhancement is performed thereon. The technical solutions of the present invention can effectively improve the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and the quality of speech in an environment of highly intense noises.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A speech enhancing device, comprising an acoustic speech enhancing unit and an electronic speech enhancing unit, wherein,
the acoustic speech enhancing unit comprises a primary vibration microphone and a secondary vibration microphone that have a specific relative positional relationship therebetween, the primary vibration microphone makes direct contact with a headphone wearer and effectively picks up the headphone wearer's speech signal through coupling vibration; the secondary vibration microphone does not make direct contact with the headphone wearer and does not couple the speech signal transmitted through coupling vibration; the specific relative positional relationship allows the primary vibration microphone to pick up a user's speech signal transmitted through coupling vibration and an ambient noise signal transmitted through the air and allows the secondary vibration microphone to mainly pick up an ambient noise signal transmitted through the air, and the ambient noise signals transmitted through the air that are picked up by the primary vibration microphone and by the secondary vibration microphone are correlated with each other;
the electronic speech enhancing unit comprises a speech detecting module, an adaptive filtering module and a post-processing module; wherein,
the speech detecting module is configured to determine an updating speed of the adaptive filtering module and output a control parameter according to sound signals within a low-frequency range output by the primary vibration microphone and by the secondary vibration microphone; wherein the speech detecting module is configured to determine the control parameter by calculating a statistic energy ratio of the sound signal output by the primary vibration microphone to the sound signal output by the secondary vibration microphone within a low-frequency range, or the speech detecting module is configured to determine the control parameter of each frequency subband by calculating a statistic energy ratio of the sound signal output by the primary vibration microphone to the sound signal output by the secondary vibration microphone within the frequency subband;
the adaptive filtering module is configured to denoise and filter the sound signal output by the primary vibration microphone according to the sound signal output by the secondary vibration microphone and the control parameter output by the speech detecting module, and output the denoised and filtered speech signal; and
the post-processing module is configured to further denoise and perform speech high-frequency enhancement on the denoised and filtered speech signal output by the adaptive filtering module.

2. The device of claim 1 , wherein,
the primary vibration microphone consists of a microphone disposed in an enclosed rubber sheath, and an enclosed air chamber is disposed between a diaphragm of the microphone and the rubber sheath; and the secondary vibration microphone has the same structure as the primary vibration microphone.

3. The device of claim 1 , wherein,
the primary vibration microphone and the secondary vibration microphone are disposed on a front surface and a back surface of a microphone support, respectively, and a vibration isolating structure is disposed between the primary vibration microphone and the secondary vibration microphone.

4. The device of claim 1 , wherein the post-processing module comprises:
a single-channel denoising submodule configured to make statistics on energy of stationary noises remaining in the denoised and filtered speech signal output by the adaptive filtering module and to subtract the energy of the stationary noises from the denoised and filtered speech signal output by the adaptive filtering module to obtain a speech signal, and then to output the speech signal to a speech high-frequency enhancing submodule; and
the speech high-frequency enhancing submodule configured to enhance high-frequency components in the speech signal that has been denoised by the single-channel denoising submodule.

5. The device of claim 1 , wherein,
the larger the statistic energy ratio is, the smaller the value of the control parameter will be, and the control parameter ranges between 0 and 1;
the larger the statistic energy ratio of the frequency subband is, the smaller the value of the control parameter corresponding to the frequency subband will be, and the control parameter corresponding to each frequency subband ranges between 0 and 1.

6. The device of claim 1 , wherein the adaptive filtering module comprises an adaptive filter and a subtractor, wherein,
the adaptive filter is configured to filter the sound signal output by the secondary vibration microphone under the control of the control parameter, and output the filtered sound signal to the subtractor; and
the subtractor is configured to subtract the signal output by the adaptive filter from the sound signal output by the primary vibration microphone to output the denoised and filtered speech signal and feed the denoised and filtered speech signal back to the adaptive filter.

7. A denoising communication headphone, comprising a speech signal transmitting port and the speech enhancing device of any one of claim 1 to claim 6 , wherein,
the speech signal transmitting port is configured to receive the speech signal denoised by the speech enhancing device and transmit the speech signal to a remote user.

8. A speech enhancing method, comprising:
picking up a first sound signal and a second sound signal by using a primary vibration microphone and a secondary vibration microphone, respectively, that have a specific relative positional relationship therebetween, the primary vibration microphone makes direct contact with a headphone wearer and effectively picks up the headphone wearer's speech signal through coupling vibration; the secondary vibration microphone does not make direct contact with the headphone wearer and does not couple the speech signal transmitted through coupling vibration; wherein the first sound signal comprises a user's speech signal transmitted through coupling vibration and an ambient noise signal transmitted through the air, the second sound signal is mainly an ambient noise signal transmitted through the air, and the ambient noise signals in the first sound signal and in the second sound signal are correlated with each other;
determining a control parameter, which is used to control an updating speed of an adaptive filter, according to the first sound signal and the second sound signal within a low-frequency range; wherein determining the control parameter by calculating a statistic energy ratio of the first sound signal to the second sound signal within a low-frequency range, or determining the control parameter of each frequency subband by calculating a statistic energy ratio of the first sound signal to the second sound signal within the frequency subband;
denoising and filtering the first sound signal according to the second sound signal and the control parameter, and outputting the denoised and filtered speech signal; and
further denoising and performing speech high-frequency enhancement on the denoised and filtered speech signal.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the step of further denoising and performing speech high-frequency enhancement on the denoised and filtered speech signal comprises:
making statistics on energy of stationary noises remaining in the denoised and filtered speech signal, subtracting the energy of the stationary noises from the denoised and filtered speech signal, and then enhancing high-frequency components.

10. The method of claim 8 or claim 9 , wherein,
the larger the statistic energy ratio is, the smaller the val

Assignees

• Zhao Jian
• Liu Song
• Li Bo
• Hua Yang
• Goertek Inc

Inventors

• Zhao Jian
• Liu Song
• Li Bo
• Hua Yang

Classifications

• H04R2410/05

  Noise reduction with a separate noise microphone · CPC title

• H04R1/083

  Special constructions of mouthpieces · CPC title

• H04R3/005

  for combining the signals of two or more microphones (specially adapted for hearing aids H04R25/407) · CPC title

• G10L21/0208 Primary

  Noise filtering · CPC title

• H04R2201/107

  Monophonic and stereophonic headphones with microphone for two-way hands free communication · CPC title