Noise reduction in subbanded speech signals

• US 7,146,316 B2
• Filed: 10/17/2002
• Issued: 12/05/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 10/17/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CSR Technology Incorporated (Qualcomm, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Clarity Technologies, Inc. (Qualcomm, Inc.)
• Inventors: Alves, Rogerio G.
• Primary Examiner(s): {hacek over (S)}mits, Talivaldis Ivars
• Assistant Examiner(s): Ng, Eunice
• Application Number:
  US10/272,921
• Publication Number:
  US 20040078200A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,510 Days
• Field of Search: 704/233, 704/227
• US Class Current: 704/233
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/0204 using subband decomposition
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2021/02168 the estimation exclusively taking place during speech pauses
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 21/0208 Noise filtering

Abstract

The presence of speech in a filtered speech signal is detected for the purpose of suspending noise level calculations during periods of speech. A received speech signal is split into a plurality of subband signals. A subband variable gain is determined for each subband based on an estimation of the noise level in the received voice signal and on an envelope of the received signal in each subband. Each subband signal is multiplied by the subband variable gain for that subband. The subband signals are combined to produce an output voice signal.

Claims

1. A system for reducing noise in an input speech signal, the input speech signal including intermittent speech in the presence of noise, the system comprising:

an analysis filter bank accepting the input speech signal, the analysis filter bank comprising a plurality of filters, each filter in the analysis filter bank extracting a subband signal from the speech signal;

a first plurality of variable gain multipliers, each first variable gain multiplier multiplying one subband signal by a first subband variable gain to produce a subband product signal;

a synthesizer accepting the plurality of subband product signals and generating a reduced noise speech signal;

a second plurality of variable gain multipliers, each second variable gain multiplier multiplying one subband signal by a second gain different than the corresponding first subband variable gain;

a voice activity detector detecting the presence of speech in the reduced noise speech signal; and

gain calculation logic for calculating the first subband variable gains, the gain calculation logic operative to;

(a) determine a noise floor level based on the input speech signal if the presence of speech is not detected,

(b) hold the noise floor level constant if the presence of speech is detected, and

(c) determine the first subband variable gains based on the noise floor level.

2. A system for reducing noise in an input speech signal as in claim 1 wherein the gain calculation logic comprises a state machine changing states based on an amount of noise extracted from the input speech signal, the first subband variable gains further based on the state of the state machine.

3. A system for reducing noise in an input speech signal as in claim 1 wherein the analysis filter bank comprises a decimator for each subband and wherein the synthesizer comprises an interpolator for each subband.

4. A system for reducing noise in an input speech signal, the input speech signal including intermittent speech in the presence of noise, the system comprising:

an analysis filter bank accepting the input speech signal, the analysis filter bank comprising a plurality of filters, each filter in the analysis filter bank extracting a subband signal from the input speech signal;

a plurality of variable gain multipliers, each variable gain multiplier multiplying one subband signal by a subband variable gain to produce a subband product signal;

a speech signal synthesizer accepting the plurality of subband product signals and generating a reduced noise speech signal;

a plurality of speech detection multipliers, each speech detection multiplier multiplying one subband signal by a speech detection subband gain to produce a detection subband signal having reduced noise content;

a speech detection synthesizer accepting the plurality of detection subband signals and generating a speech detection signal;

a voice activity detector detecting the presence of speech in the speech detection signal; and

gain calculation logic generating the subband variable gains based on the detected presence of speech.

5. A system for reducing noise in an input speech signal as in claim 4 wherein the subband variable gain for each subband is based on a ratio of an input speech envelope level to a noise floor envelope level, the noise floor envelope level based on the detected presence of speech.

6. A system for reducing noise in an input speech signal as in claim 5 wherein the noise floor envelope level remains constant during a period of detected speech.

7. A system for reducing noise in an input speech signal as in claim 4 wherein the gain calculation logic comprises a state machine changing states based on a level of noise detected in the input speech signal, the subband variable gains further based on the state of the state machine.

8. A system for reducing noise in an input speech signal as in claim 4 wherein the analysis filter bank comprises a decimator for each subband and wherein the speech signal synthesizer and the voice detection synthesizer each comprises an interpolator for each subband.

9. A method of processing a speech signal, the speech signal including intermittent speech in the presence of noise, the method comprising:

dividing the speech signal into subbands;

multiplying each subband of the speech signal by a subband variable gain;

multiplying each subband of the speech signal by a speech detection subband gain to generate a detection speech signal;

detecting speech present in the detection speech signal; and

determining each subband variable gain based on the speech signal and on the detected presence of speech.

10. A system for processing a speech signal comprising:

means for dividing the speech signal into at least one set of subbands;

means for amplifying each subband from a first set of subbands to produce a plurality of filtered first set subbands;

means for combining the plurality of filtered first set subbands to produce a first filtered speech signal;

means for determining the presence of speech based in the first filtered speech signal;

means for amplifying each subband from a second set of subbands to produce a plurality of filtered second set subbands, each subband from the second set of subbands amplified by one of a plurality of variable gains;

means for combining the plurality of filtered second set subbands to produce a second filtered speech signal; and

means for determining the variable gains based on the detected presence of speech and on the speech signal.

11. A system for processing a speech signal as in claim 10 wherein the first set of subbands is the same as the second set of subbands.

12. A system for processing a speech signal as in claim 10 wherein the first set of subbands is not the same as the second set of subbands.