Method and system for clear signal capture

A method of frequency-domain-based noise cancellation (NC) wherein a noisy signal resulting from an unobservable signal corrupted by additive background noise is processed in an attempt to restore the unobservable signal, wherein background noise power is estimated with a recursive noise estimator having an adaptive time constant, and wherein a noise cancellation filter is applied to the noisy signal, the method comprising:

• receiving the noisy signal;
• adjusting the time constant periodically based on a likelihood that there is no speech power present such that the noise power estimator tracks at a lesser rate when the likelihood is lower;
• determining a preliminary filter gain based on the estimated background noise power and a total noisy signal power;
• determining the noise cancellation filter gain by smoothing the variations in the preliminary filter gain to result in the noise cancellation filter gain having regulated variation to avoid watery noise when the noise power estimator tracks at a greater rate and to avoid generating ambient speech when the noise power estimator tracks at a lesser rate;
• and
• applying the noise cancellation filter to the noisy signal to produce an output signal that resembles the unobservable signal.