Adaptive beamforming method and apparatus using feedback structure

An adaptive beamforming apparatus, comprising:

• a fixed beamformer that compensates for time delays of M noise-containing speech signals input via a microphone array having M microphones, wherein M is an integer greater than or equal to 2, and generates a sum signal of the M compensated noise-containing speech signals;
• and
• a multi-channel signal separator that extracts pure noise components from the M compensated noise-containing speech signals using feedback providing a noise-removed signal to M adaptive blocking filters and M adaptive canceling filters connected in a feedback structure and finally generates the noise-removed signal from the sum signal by providing the pure noise components to the M adaptive canceling filters.

An adaptive beamforming apparatus, comprising:

• a receiver that receives signals including noise components, delays the received signals by a calculated time to provide delayed received signals, and adds the delayed received signals to provide a combination received signal;
• a signal separator that generates a clean signal without noise components based on adaptively filtering the delayed received signals and the combination received signal by a plurality of adaptive blocking filters having blocking coefficients and a plurality of adaptive canceling filters having canceling coefficients connected in a feedback structure, wherein the blocking coefficients and the canceling coefficients are automatically updated during operation of the signal separator.