Noise suppression system
First Claim
1. An improved noise suppression system for attenuating the background noise from a noisy input signal to produce a noise-suppressed output signal, said noise suppression system comprising:
- means for separating the input signal into a plurality of pre-processed signals representative of selected frequency channels;
means for generating estimates of the signal-plus-noise energy and the noise energy in each individual channel;
means for producing a gain value for each individual channel in response to said channel energy estimates, said gain values having a minimum gain value for each channel, said gain value producing means including threshold means for allowing gain values above said minimum gain value to be prodeced only when said signal-plus-noise energy estimates exceed said noise energy estimates by a predetermined amount; and
means for modifying the gain of each of said plurality of pre-processed signals in esponse to said gain values to provide a plurality of post-processed signals.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
An improved noise suppression system (800) is disclosed which performs speech quality enhancement upon the speech-plus-noise signal available at the input (205) to generate a clean speech signal at the output (265) by spectral gain modification. The improvements of the present invention include the addition of a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) threshold mechanism (830) to reduce background noise flutter by offsetting the gain rise of the gain tables until a certain SNR threshold is reached, the use of a voice metric calculator (810) to produce more accurate background noise estimates via performing the update decision based on the overall voice-like characteristics in the channels and the time interval since the last update, and the use of a channel SNR modifier (820) to provide immunity to narrowband noise bursts through modification of the SNR estimates based on the voice metric calculation and the channel energies.
300 Citations
50 Claims
-
1. An improved noise suppression system for attenuating the background noise from a noisy input signal to produce a noise-suppressed output signal, said noise suppression system comprising:
-
means for separating the input signal into a plurality of pre-processed signals representative of selected frequency channels; means for generating estimates of the signal-plus-noise energy and the noise energy in each individual channel; means for producing a gain value for each individual channel in response to said channel energy estimates, said gain values having a minimum gain value for each channel, said gain value producing means including threshold means for allowing gain values above said minimum gain value to be prodeced only when said signal-plus-noise energy estimates exceed said noise energy estimates by a predetermined amount; and means for modifying the gain of each of said plurality of pre-processed signals in esponse to said gain values to provide a plurality of post-processed signals. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
-
-
9. An improved noise suppression system for attenuating the background noise from a noisy input signal to produce a noise-suppressed output signal, said noise suppression system comprising:
-
means for separating the input signal into a plurality of pre-processed signals representative of selected frequency channels; means for generating and storing an estimate of the background noise power spectral density of said pre-processed signals, said background noise estimate generating means including means for modifying said background noise estimate in response to a timing parameter indicative of the time interval since the previous background noise estimate modification; means for generating an estimate of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in each individual channel based upon said modified background noise estimates; means for producing a gain value for each individual channel in response to said channel SNR estimates; and means for modifying the gain of each of said plurality of pre-processed signals in response to said gain values to provide a plurality of post-procesed signals. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
-
-
22. An improved noise suppression system for attenuating the background noise from a noisy input signal to produce a noise-suppressed output signal, said noise suppression system comprising:
-
means for separating the input signal into a plurality of pre-processed signals representative of a number N of selected frequency channels means for generating an estimate of the energy in each individual channel; means for monitoring said channel energy estimates and for distinguishing narrowband noise bursts from speech energy and background noise energy, thereby producing a modification signal; means for selectively modifying said channel energy estimates in response to said modification signal such that channel energy estimates representative of narrowband noise bursts are modified; means for producing a gain value for each individual channel in response to each modified channel energy estimate; and means for modifying the gain of each of said plurality of pre-processed signals in response to said gain values to provide a plurality of post-processed signals. - View Dependent Claims (23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)
-
-
31. An improved method of attenuating the background noise from a noisy input signal to produce a noise-suppressed output signal in a noise suppression system comprising the steps of:
-
separating the input signal into a plurality of preprocessed signals representative of a number N of selected frequency channels; generating an estimate of the energy in each individual channel; generating and storing an estimate of the background noise power spectral density of said pre-processed signals; generating an estimate of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in each individual channel based upon said background noise estimates and said channel energy estimates; producing a gain value for each individual channel in response to said channel SNR estimates, said gain values having a range of minimal values, said gain value producing step including the steps of providing a predefined SNR threshold and comparing said channel SNR estimates to said predefined SNR threshold such that channels having SNR estimates below said SNR threshold produce gain values within said minimal range; and modifying the gain of each of said plurality of preprocessed signals in response to said gain values to provide a plurality of post-processed signals. - View Dependent Claims (32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50)
-
Specification