Tracking talkers using virtual broadside scan and directed beams
First Claim
1. A method comprising:
- (a) identifying one or more angles of one or more acoustic sources from peaks in an amplitude envelope, wherein the amplitude envelope corresponds to an output of a virtual broadside scan on blocks of input signal samples, one block from each microphone in an array of microphones;
(b) for each of the source angles, operating on the input signal blocks with a directed beam pointed in the direction of the source angle to obtain a corresponding beam signal;
(c) classifying each source as intelligence or noise based on analysis of spectral characteristics of the corresponding beam signal;
(d) of those one or more sources that are classified as intelligence, identifying one or more sources whose corresponding beams signals have highest energies;
(e) generating an output signal from the one or more beam signals corresponding to the one or more intelligence sources having highest energies.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A communication system (e.g., a speakerphone) includes an array of microphones, a speaker, memory and a processor. The processor may be configured to perform acoustic echo cancellation, to track multiple talkers with highly directed beams, to design beams with nulls pointed at noise sources, to generate a 3D model of the physical environment, to compensate for the proximity effect, and to perform dereverberation of a talker'"'"'s voice signal. The processor may also be configured to use a standard codec in non-standard ways. The processor may perform a virtual broadside scan on the microphone array, analyze the resulting amplitude envelope for acoustic source angles, examine each of the source angles with a directed beam, combine the beam outputs that show the characteristics of intelligence or speech.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. A method comprising:
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(a) identifying one or more angles of one or more acoustic sources from peaks in an amplitude envelope, wherein the amplitude envelope corresponds to an output of a virtual broadside scan on blocks of input signal samples, one block from each microphone in an array of microphones;
(b) for each of the source angles, operating on the input signal blocks with a directed beam pointed in the direction of the source angle to obtain a corresponding beam signal;
(c) classifying each source as intelligence or noise based on analysis of spectral characteristics of the corresponding beam signal;
(d) of those one or more sources that are classified as intelligence, identifying one or more sources whose corresponding beams signals have highest energies;
(e) generating an output signal from the one or more beam signals corresponding to the one or more intelligence sources having highest energies. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A computer readable memory medium configured to store program instructions, wherein the program instructions are executable to implement:
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(a) identifying one or more angles of one or more acoustic sources from peaks in an amplitude envelope, wherein the amplitude envelope corresponds to an output of a virtual broadside scan on blocks of input signal samples, one block from each microphone in an array of microphones;
(b) for each of the source angles, operating on the input signal blocks with a directed beam pointed in the direction of the source angle to obtain a corresponding beam signal;
(c) classifying each source as intelligence or noise based on analysis of spectral characteristics of the corresponding beam signal;
(d) of those one or more sources that are classified as intelligence, identifying one or more sources whose corresponding beams signals have highest energies;
(e) generating an output signal from the one or more beam signals corresponding to the one or more intelligence sources having highest energies. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
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18. A system comprising:
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memory configured to store program instructions;
a processor configured to read and execute the program instructions from the memory, wherein the program instructions are executable by the processor to implement;
(a) identifying one or more angles of one or more acoustic sources from peaks in an amplitude envelope, wherein the amplitude envelope corresponds to an output of a virtual broadside scan on blocks of input signal samples, one block from each microphone in an array of microphones;
(b) for each of the source angles, operating on the input signal blocks with a directed beam pointed in the direction of the source angle to obtain a corresponding beam signal;
(c) classifying each source as intelligence or noise based on analysis of spectral characteristics of the corresponding beam signal;
(d) of those one or more sources that are classified as intelligence, identifying one or more sources whose corresponding beams signals have highest energies;
(e) generating an output signal from the one or more beam signals corresponding to the one or more intelligence sources having highest energies. - View Dependent Claims (19, 20)
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Specification