Robust two microphone noise suppression system

Abstract

A system, method, and apparatus for separating speech signal from a noisy acoustic environment. The separation process may include directional filtering, blind source separation, and dual input spectral subtraction noise suppressor. The input channels may include two omnidirectional microphones whose output is processed using phase delay filtering to form speech and noise beamforms. Further, the beamforms may be frequency corrected. The omnidirectional microphones generate one channel that is substantially only noise, and another channel that is a combination of noise and speech. A blind source separation algorithm augments the directional separation through statistical techniques. The noise signal and speech signal are then used to set process characteristics at a dual input noise spectral subtraction suppressor (DINS) to efficiently reduce or eliminate the noise component. In this way, the noise is effectively removed from the combination signal to generate a good qualify speech signal.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to systems and methods for processing multiple acoustic signals, and more particularly to separating acoustic signals by filtering. Background technique [0002] Detecting and responding to informative signals in noisy environments is often difficult. In communications where users often speak in noisy environments, it is desirable to separate the user's speech signal from background noise. Background noise can include many noisy signals generated by the general environment, signals generated by other people's background conversations, and reflections and reverberation generated from each signal. [0003] In noisy environments, uplink communication can be a serious problem. Most solutions to this noise problem only work on certain types of noise, such as stationary noise, or produce significant audio artifacts that can annoy users as much as noise signals. All existing solutions have drawbacks with respect to the source ...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

All existing solutions have drawbacks with respect to source and noise location, and the type of noise they are trying to suppress

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