Microphone with programmable phone onset detection engine

A assembly method of detecting a particular phoneme sound, the method comprising:

• converting an acoustic signal sensed by a transducer of a microphone assembly to an electrical signal representative of the acoustic signal;
• a separating the electrical signal into a plurality of frequency bands by a configurable filter bank, said configurable filter bank comprising a plurality of filter elements and switches configurable to selectively interconnect selective ones of the filter elements based a control signal from a control interface;
• determining energy estimates for the plurality of frequency bands;
• comparing the plurality of energy estimates with expected energies of the plurality of frequency bands for the particular phoneme sound;
• and
• indicating occurrence of the particular phoneme sound in response to determining there is a match between the plurality of energy estimates and the expected energies of the plurality of frequency bands for the particular phoneme sound.

A microphone assembly comprising:

• a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) transducer configured to convert an acoustic signal to an electrical signal representative of the acoustical signal;
• a configurable filter bank having an input coupled to an output of the transducer, the filter bank configured separate the electrical signal into a plurality of frequency bands, said configurable filter bank comprising a plurality of filter elements and switches configurable to selectively interconnect selective ones of the filter elements based a control signal from a control interface,
• an energy estimator circuit configured to determining energy estimates for each of the plurality of frequency bands;
• a phoneme sound detector configured to compare the plurality of energy estimates with expected energies of the plurality of frequency bands for a particular phoneme sound;
• and
• indicating occurrence of the particular phoneme sound if there is a match between the plurality of energy estimates and the expected energies of the plurality of frequency bands of the particular phoneme sound.