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US 10,433,051 B2Granted
Method and system to determine a sound source direction using small microphone arrays
AssigneeStaton Techiya LLC
InventorJohn Usher
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Herein provided is a method and system to determine a sound source direction using a microphone array comprising at least four microphones by analysis of the complex coherence between at least two microphones. The method includes determining the relative angle of incidence of the sound source and communicating directional data to a secondary device, and adjusting at least one parameter of the device in view of the directional data. Other embodiments are disclosed.
Claims21
A method, practiced by way of a processor, to determine the direction of a sound source near a multi-microphone array comprising the steps of:
- capturing at least 4 microphone signals of a microphone array;
- calculating a complex coherence between all microphone signal pairs;
- determining an edge value for each microphone signal pair using an aspect of the complex coherence, wherein the aspect of the complex coherence is a phase angle of the complex coherence;
- estimating, by utilizing the edge value, a sound source direction relative to the microphone array;
- and
- transmitting, to a device, a signal including the sound source direction relative to the microphone array, wherein a parameter of the device is adjusted based on sound source direction included in the signal.
3 more elements
A method, practiced by way of a processor, to determine the direction of a sound source near a multi-microphone array comprising the steps of:
- capturing at least 4 microphone signals of a microphone array;
- calculating a complex coherence between all microphone signal pairs;
- determining an edge value for each microphone signal pair using an aspect of the complex coherence, wherein the aspect of the complex coherence is an imaginary part of the complex coherence;
- estimating, by utilizing the edge value, a sound source direction relative to the microphone array;
- and
- transmitting, to a device, a signal including the sound source direction relative to the microphone array, wherein a parameter of the device is adjusted based on sound source direction included in the signal.
3 more elements
A method, practiced by way of a processor, to determine the direction of a sound source near a multi-microphone array comprising the steps of:
- capturing at least 4 microphone signals of a microphone array;
- calculating a complex coherence between all microphone signal pairs;
- determining an edge value for each microphone signal pair using an aspect of the complex coherence, wherein the edge value is represented by STATUS_XY, and wherein the step of determining the edge value for each microphone signal pair includes the steps of:
- 1. Determining AV_IMAG_CXY by averaging of an aspect of the complex coherence between microphones X and Y, wherein the averaging comprises taking a mean of the aspect of the complex coherence between the microphones X and Y, wherein AV_IMAG_CXY is an average value of an imaginary component of the complex coherence.
- 2. Comparing AV_IMAG_CXY to a threshold value T
- 3. and based on the comparison of step 2, setting the STATUS_XY to:
- a. If AV_IMAG_CXY<−T then STATUS_XY=−1.
- b. If −T<AV_IMAG_CXY<T then STATUS_XY=0.
- c. If AV_IMAG_CXY>T then STATUS_XY=1, and
- estimating, by utilizing the edge value, a sound source direction relative to the microphone array;
- and
- transmitting, to a device, a signal including the sound source direction relative to the microphone array, wherein a parameter of the device is adjusted based on sound source direction included in the signal.
9 more elements
A method, practiced by way of a processor, to determine the direction of a sound source near a multi-microphone array comprising the steps of:
- capturing at least 4 microphone signals of a microphone array;
- calculating a complex coherence between all microphone signal pairs;
- determining an edge value for each microphone signal pair using an aspect of the complex coherence, wherein the edge value is represented by STATUS_XY, and wherein the step of determining the edge value for each microphone signal pair includes the steps of:
- 1. Determining AV_IMAG_CXY by averaging of an aspect of the complex coherence between microphones X and Y, wherein the averaging comprises taking a mean of the aspect of the complex coherence between the microphones X and Y, wherein AV_IMAG_CXY is an average value of an imaginary component of the complex coherence;
- 2. setting the STATUS_XY to any value between −1 and 1.0, where STATUS_XY=c/AV_IMAG_CXY, where c is a scalar value;
- and
- estimating, by utilizing the edge value, a sound source direction relative to the microphone array;
- and
- transmitting, to a device, a signal including the sound source direction relative to the microphone array, wherein a parameter of the device is adjusted based on sound source direction included in the signal.
6 more elements
A method, practiced by way of a processor, to determine the direction of a sound source near a multi-microphone array comprising the steps of:
- capturing at least 4 microphone signals of a microphone array;
- calculating a complex coherence between all microphone signal pairs;
- determining an edge value for each microphone signal pair using an aspect of the complex coherence;
- estimating, by utilizing the edge value, a sound source direction relative to the microphone array, wherein the step of estimating the sound source direction relative to the microphone array comprises the steps:
- 1. estimating the location of the source on the x, y, or z axis, and calculating an element by element sum of the product of the x, y or z axis component of each microphone pair edge vector, with the edge value;
- 2. calculating a vector from a location within the microphone array to the estimated x, y, z location of the sound source, and
- transmitting, to a device, a signal including the sound source direction relative to the microphone array, wherein a parameter of the device is adjusted based on sound source direction included in the signal.
4 more elements
A method, practiced by way of a processor, to determine a voice activity status (VAS) proximal to a microphone array comprising the steps of:
- 1. capturing at least 4 microphone signals of a microphone array;
- 2. estimating the direction of a sound source at a given time instance;
- 3. determining a time variation in the sound source direction, wherein the variation is determined as an angle fluctuation expressed in degrees per second;
- 4. determining a VAS based on the time variation value from step 3, wherein the VAS is set to 1 if the time variation is below a predetermined threshold that is equal to 5 degrees per second, wherein a microphone gain value is determined based on the VAS, and wherein the method further comprises generating the microphone gain based on the VAS, and the VAS is converted to a time-smoothed VAS value that has a continuous possible range of values between 0.0 and 1.0;
- and
- 5. transmitting, to a device, a signal including the direction of the sound source and the VAS, wherein a parameter of the device is adjusted based on the direction of the sound source included in the signal.
3 more elements
A method, practiced by way of a processor, to determine a voice activity status (VAS) proximal to a microphone array comprising the steps of:
- 1. capturing at least 4 microphone signals of a microphone array;
- 2. estimating the direction of a sound source at a given time instance;
- 3. determining a time variation in the sound source direction, wherein the variation is determined as an angle fluctuation expressed in degrees per second;
- 4. determining a VAS based on the time variation value from step 3, wherein the VAS is set to 1 if the time variation is below a predetermined threshold that is equal to 5 degrees per second, wherein a microphone gain value is determined based on the VAS, and wherein the method further comprises generating the microphone gain based on the VAS, and the VAS is converted to a time-smoothed VAS value that has a continuous possible range of values between 0.0 and 1.0, wherein the generated microphone gain is applied to at least one of the at least 4 microphone signals;
- and
- 5. transmitting, to a device, a signal including the direction of the sound source and the VAS, wherein a parameter of the device is adjusted based on the direction of the sound source included in the signal.
3 more elements
A method, practiced by way of a processor, to determine a voice activity status (VAS) proximal to a microphone array comprising the steps of:
- 1. capturing at least 4 microphone signals of a microphone array;
- 2. estimating the direction of a sound source at a given time instance;
- 3. determining a time variation in the sound source direction, wherein the variation is determined as an angle fluctuation expressed in degrees per second;
- 4. determining a VAS based on the time variation value from step 3, wherein the VAS is set to 1 if the time variation is below a predetermined threshold that is equal to 5 degrees per second, wherein the VAS and a corresponding microphone gain value are frequency dependent;
- and
- 5. transmitting, to a device, a signal including the direction of the sound source and the VAS, wherein a parameter of the device is adjusted based on the direction of the sound source included in the signal.
3 more elements
A system, comprising:
- a microphone array including microphones;
- and
- a processor that performs operations comprising:
- capturing at least 4 microphone signals of a microphone array;
- calculating a complex coherence between all microphone signal pairs;
- determining an edge value for each microphone signal pair using an aspect of the complex coherence, wherein the aspect of the complex coherence is a phase angle of the complex coherence;
- estimating, by utilizing the edge value, a sound source direction relative to the microphone array;
- and
- transmitting, to a device, a signal including the sound source direction relative to the microphone array, wherein a parameter of the device is adjusted based on sound source direction included in the signal.
6 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.