Beamforming and gainsharing mixing of small circular array of bidirectional microphones

An apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of bidirectional microphones, each bidirectional microphone configured to receive audio from an audio source and generate an audio signal;
• a processor configured to:
• form a plurality of audio beams from combinations of the audio signals generated from the plurality of bidirectional microphones, wherein each audio beam captures audio from either a respective positive polarity zone or a respective negative polarity zone;
• determine a direction of the audio source;
• select a perpendicular audio beam pair based on the direction of the audio source, wherein the selected perpendicular audio beam pair includes a primary audio beam aimed toward the direction of the audio source and a secondary audio beam perpendicular to the primary audio beam;
• and
• generate an output signal by combining the primary audio beam with the secondary audio beam based on a comparison of which respective polarity zones the audio is captured for the primary audio beam and the secondary audio beam.

One or more computer readable storage media encoded with software comprising computer executable instructions and, when the software is executed by a processor, cause the processor to:

• receive audio of an audio source at a plurality of bidirectional microphones;
• generate an audio signal from each of the bidirectional microphones;
• form a plurality of audio beams from combinations of the audio signals generated from the plurality of bidirectional microphones, wherein each audio beam captures audio from either a respective positive polarity zone or a respective negative polarity zone;
• determine a direction of the audio source;
• select a perpendicular audio beam pair based on the direction of the audio source, wherein the selected perpendicular audio beam pair includes a primary audio beam aimed toward the direction of the audio source and a secondary audio beam perpendicular to the primary audio beam;
• generate an output signal by combining the primary audio beam with the secondary audio beam based on a comparison of which respective polarity zones the audio is captured for the primary audio beam and the secondary audio beam.