MULTIPLE MICROPHONE SWITCHING AND CONFIGURATION

• US 20130216050A1
• Filed: 03/14/2013
• Published: 08/22/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Chen, Shaohai, Li, Xingqun
• Granted Patent: US 9,723,401 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 381/56
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2021/02165 Two microphones, one receiving mainly the noise signal and the other one mainly the speech signal
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2021/02166 Microphone arrays; Beamforming
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 21/0208 Noise filtering
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 3/23 using a replica of transmitted signal in the time domain, e.g. echo cancellers
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/035 Improving the acoustic characteristics by means of constructional features of the housing, e.g. ribs, walls, resonating chambers or cavities
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/6008 in the transmitter circuit
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/605 involving control of the receiver volume to provide a dual operational mode at close or far distance from the user
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 9/082 using echo cancellers echo cancellers per se H04B3/23
• CPC Class Codes: H04R 2410/05 Noise reduction with a separate noise microphone
• CPC Class Codes: H04R 3/00 Circuits for transducers , loudspeakers or microphones
• CPC Class Codes: H04R 3/005 for combining the signals of two or more microphones specially adapted for hearing aids H04R25/407

Abstract

A mobile communications device contains at least two microphones. One microphone is designated by a selector to provide a voice dominant signal and another microphone is designated to provide a noise or echo dominant signal, for a call or a recording. The selector communicates the designations to a switch that routes the selected microphone signals to the inputs of a processor for voice signal enhancement. The selected voice dominant signal is then enhanced by suppressing ambient noise or canceling echo therein, based on the selected noise or echo dominant signal. The designation of microphones may change at any instant during the call or recording depending on various factors, e.g. based on the quality of the microphone signals. Other embodiments are also described.

Claims

1. A mobile communications apparatus comprising:

a mobile communications handheld device housing having integrated therein

a plurality of microphones; and

an audio processor to provide an uplink voice signal for a call by enhancing a voice dominant input signal using an echo or noise dominant input signal, the audio processor to run a switching process that monitors audio picked up by the microphones and compares signals from the microphones with each other and on that basis designates one of the microphones to provide the voice dominant input signal and another one of the microphones to provide the echo or noise dominant input signal, wherein the switching process is to dynamically change said designation of the microphones during the call based on a current call handling mode of the apparatus, being one of handset mode and speakerphone mode.