Adaptive Directional Audio Enhancement for Hands-Free Devices
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Solution Overview
Problem
Hands-free communication devices often suffer from acoustic echo and ambient noise due to lack of isolation between microphones and speakers, which interferes with voice recognition and communication.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of adaptive directional audio enhancement and selection techniques using a microphone array with audio processing components that suppress ambient noise and acoustic echo, followed by adaptive beamforming to focus audio reception on specific parts of the environment, and voice detection to select the appropriate directional audio signals for further processing.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If broad directional coverage is used to pick up user speech regardless of location, then speech capture capability is improved, but ambient noise pickup increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the omnidirectional audio capture into multiple directional beams using a microphone array. Instead of one broad pickup pattern, the system creates several focused directional beams that can be independently controlled and processed to capture speech from different locations while rejecting ambient noise.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements dynamic beamforming where the directional audio beams can be adaptively adjusted in real-time. The system dynamically forms different beam patterns and selects the most appropriate beam based on the user's location and speech characteristics, allowing the microphone array to adapt its coverage pattern as needed.
2Reliability
If acoustic echo suppression techniques are applied, then communication quality is improved, but processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary acoustic echo cancellation by processing the microphone signals to remove echo components before further audio processing. The system pre-computes echo reference signals and uses adaptive filtering to subtract echo from the captured audio, preparing cleaner signals for subsequent beamforming and voice recognition.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary processing stage that separates echo cancellation from beamforming operations. By using intermediate echo reference signals and adaptive filters as mediators, the system can effectively remove acoustic echo while maintaining the integrity of the directional audio processing pipeline.
3Measurement precision
If adaptive beamforming is used to focus audio reception, then voice recognition accuracy is improved, but computational requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by focusing computational resources on specific directional regions rather than processing all directions equally. The adaptive beamforming algorithm concentrates audio energy from directions where speech is likely to occur while suppressing other directions, thereby improving voice recognition accuracy where it matters most while reducing overall computational load.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This solution effectively reduces ambient noise and acoustic echo, improving voice recognition and communication quality by enhancing audio signals and directing them towards the user, thereby enhancing user interactions with devices and systems.
Implementation Method 1
adaptive beamforming techniques are used to focus audio reception on specific parts of a room or other environment
Data Source
AI summary
A hands-free audio device has a receive path and a transmit path, which may operate at different audio sampling rates. The transmit path has an interference suppressor that receives a reference signal from the receive path and that suppresses interference in microphone signals received from a microphone array. The interference suppressor is followed in the transmit path by a multi-channel adaptive beamformer that produce a plurality of directional audio signals. A beam selector is configured to select one of the directional audio signals based on voice activity, echo detection, and signal energy.