Audio signal processing for noise reduction
AssigneeBose Corporation
InventorsAlaganandan Ganeshkumar, Xiang-Ern Yeo, Mehmet Ergezer
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A headphone, headphone system, and speech enhancing method is provided to enhance speech pick-up from the user of a headphone and includes receiving a plurality of signals from a set of microphones and generating a primary signal by array processing the microphone signals to steer a beam toward the user's mouth. A noise reference signal is also derived from one or more microphones, and a voice estimate signal is generated by filtering the primary signal to remove components that are correlated to the noise reference signal.
Claims21
A method of enhancing speech of a headphone user, the method comprising:
- receiving a first plurality of signals derived from a first plurality of microphones coupled to the headphone;
- array processing the first plurality of signals to steer a beam toward the user's mouth to generate a first primary signal;
- receiving a second plurality of signals derived from a second plurality of microphones coupled to the headphone at a different location from the first plurality of microphones;
- array processing the second plurality of signals to steer a beam toward the user's mouth to generate a second primary signal;
- receiving a reference signal derived from one or more microphones, the reference signal correlated to background acoustic noise;
- and
- providing a voice estimate signal based upon a combination of the first primary signal and the second primary signal and at least in part by removing components correlated to the reference signal.
A headphone system, comprising:
- a plurality of left microphones coupled to a left earpiece;
- a plurality of right microphones coupled to a right earpiece;
- one or more array processors configured to:
- receive a plurality of left signals derived from the plurality of left microphones,
- steer a beam, by an array processing technique acting upon the plurality of left signals, to provide a left primary signal,
- steer a null, by an array processing technique acting upon the plurality of left signals, to provide a left reference signal,
- receive a plurality of right signals derived from the plurality of right microphones,
- steer a beam, by an array processing technique acting upon the plurality of right signals, to provide a right primary signal, and
- steer a null, by an array processing technique acting upon the plurality of right signals, to provide a right reference signal;
- a first combiner to provide a combined primary signal as a combination of the left primary signal and the right primary signal;
- a second combiner to provide a combined reference signal as a combination of the left reference signal and the right reference signal;
- and
- an adaptive filter configured to receive the combined primary signal and the combined reference signal and provide a voice estimate signal.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.