Hands-Free Telephony and In-Vehicle Communication

• US 20130210498A1
• Filed: 01/04/2013
• Published: 08/15/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 08/07/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cerence Operating Company (Cerence Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Haulick, Tim, Iser, Bernd, Schmidt, Gerhard Uwe, Wolf, Arthur
• Granted Patent: US 8,805,453 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/569.2
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2021/02082 the noise being echo, reverberation of the speech
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/6083 by interfacing with the vehicle audio system
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 9/00 Arrangements for interconnection not involving centralised switching

Abstract

The present invention relates to a signal processing system, comprising a number of microphones and loudspeakers, a hands-free set configured to receive a telephone signal from a remote party and to transmit a microphone signal supplied by at least one of the microphones to the remote party; an in-vehicle communication system configured to receive a microphone signal supplied by at least one of the microphones; receive the telephone signal; amplify the microphone signal to obtain at least one first output signal; output the at least one first output signal and/or a second output signal corresponding to the telephone signal to at least one of the loudspeakers; and wherein the signal processing systems is configured to detect speech activity in the telephone signal and to control the in-vehicle communication system to reduce amplification of the microphone signal by a damping factor, if it is detected that speech activity is present in the telephone signal.

Claims

1-19. -19. (canceled)

20. A processing system for a combined hands-free telecommunication and in-vehicle communication system for a vehicle, the processing system configured to:

receive, by a hands-free set, a telephone signal from a party remote from the vehicle;

receive, by an in-vehicle microphone of the in-vehicle communication system, a microphone signal from an occupant of the vehicle;

detect speech activity in the telephone signal; and

reduce amplification of the microphone signal when speech activity is present in the telephone signal.

21. The processing system of claim 20 wherein the processing system is coupled to a plurality of microphones and a plurality of speakers of the hands-free telecommunication and in-vehicle communication system.

22. The processing system of claim 20 further comprising an adaptive echo compensation filtering system, the processing system configured to adapt the filter coefficients of the echo compensation filtering system only when output of the microphone signal is reduced to a predetermined level.

23. The processing system of claim 22 wherein the processing system is configured to receive multiple microphone signals in multiple channels and to amplify the multiple microphone signals to obtain multiple first output signals, further comprising:

a power estimating module configured to estimate the short-time power density of the multiple first output signals and to supply the maximum of the short-time power densities of the multiple first output signals to the hands-free set; and

wherein the processing system is configured to determine whether the at least one first output signal output by the in-vehicle communication system is reduced to the predetermined level based on the maximum of the short-time power densities of the multiple first output signals.

24. The processing system of claim 20 further comprising:

a first equalization filter module configured to equalize microphone signals obtained by at least one microphone and input in the hands-free set and to adapt the filter coefficients of the first equalization filter module in the sub-band or Fourier domain; and

a second equalization filtering module configured to equalize microphone signals input in the in-vehicle communication system and to adapt the filter coefficients of the second equalization filtering module in the time domain based on the adapted filter coefficients of the first equalization filtering module.

25. The processing system of claim 20 wherein the processing system is configured to process the microphone signal in the time domain and further comprises an analysis filter bank to obtain microphone sub-band signals or a Fourier transform module to obtain Fourier transformed microphone signals;

and wherein the processing system is configured to detect speech activity in microphone signals obtained by at least one of the number of microphones and input in the in-vehicle communication system by processing the microphone signals in the time domain; and

supply a signal to the hands-free set operating in the sub-band or Fourier domain that indicates speech activity or no speech activity.

26. The processing system of claim 20 wherein the hands-free set is configured to detect speech activity in the telephone signal and to supply a damping factor for reducing the amplification to the in-vehicle communication system when the speech activity is present in the telephone signal.

27. A method for reducing amplification of a microphone signal of an in-vehicle communication system, comprising:

receive a telephone signal from a party remote from the vehicle;

receive, by an in-vehicle microphone, a microphone signal from an occupant of the vehicle;

detect speech activity in the telephone signal; and

reduce amplification of the microphone signal when speech activity is present in the telephone signal.

28. The method of claim 27 further comprising:

inputting the microphone signal to an adaptive echo compensation filtering module;

echo compensating the microphone signal input; and

transmitting the echo compensated microphone signal to the remote party.

29. The method of claim 28 wherein filter coefficients are only adapted when at least one first processed signal is damped to a predetermined level with respect to a first gain factor.

30. The method of claim 29 further comprising obtaining a second gain factor based on the first gain factor and a damping factor.

31. The method of claim 27 wherein the hands-free set comprises a first equalization filtering module configured to equalize microphone signals obtained by at least two of the set of microphones and input in the hands-free set;

the in-vehicle communication system comprises a second equalization filtering module configured to equalize microphone signals input in the in-vehicle communication system;

the method comprising the steps of;

adapting the filter coefficients of the first equalization filtering module in the sub-band or Fourier domain; and

adapting the filter coefficients of the second equalization filtering module in the time domain based on the adapted filter coefficients of the first equalization filtering module.

32. The method of claim 27 further comprising:

detecting speech activity in microphone signals obtained by at least one of the set of microphones and input in the in-vehicle communication system by processing the microphone signals in the time domain by the in-vehicle communication system; and

supplying a signal by the in-vehicle communication system to the hands-free set operating in the sub-band or Fourier domain that indicates speech activity or no speech activity present in the microphone signal in response to the step of speech detection.

33. A combined hands-free telecommunication and in-vehicle communication system, comprising:

a plurality of microphones;

a plurality of speakers; and

a signal processing system configured to;

receive, by a hands-free set, a telephone signal from a party remote from the vehicle;

receive, by an in-vehicle microphone of the in-vehicle communication system, a microphone signal from an occupant of the vehicle;

detect speech activity in the telephone signal; and

reduce amplification of the microphone signal when speech activity is present in the telephone signal.