US RE50,627 E1
Wired and wireless microphone arrays
Jacob G. Appelbaum, Gainesville, FL (US); Paul Wilkinson Dent, Pittsboro, NC (US); and Leonid Krasny, Cary, NC (US)
Assigned to Advanced Technology Development, Inc., Gainesville, FL (US)
Filed by Advanced Technology Development, Inc., Gainesville, FL (US)
Filed on May 2, 2019, as Appl. No. 16/402,088.
Application 16/402,088 is a reissue of application No. 13/908,178, filed on Jun. 3, 2013, granted, now 9,641,933, issued on May 2, 2017.
Claims priority of provisional application 61/690,019, filed on Jun. 18, 2012.
Int. Cl. H04R 3/00 (2006.01); H04R 29/00 (2006.01)
CPC H04R 3/002 (2013.01) [H04R 29/005 (2013.01); H04R 2201/401 (2013.01)] 39 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A system and apparatus for dynamically improving the ratio of a wanted speech signal from a principal speaker to random background noise that is not known or characterized a priori, comprising:
a principal microphone configured to be worn by said principal speaker and configured to produce a first [ principal ] audio signal containing a first sampling of the wanted speech plus unwanted background noise that has not previously been measured or characterized;
at least one incidental microphone located remotely from said principal microphone by several acoustic wavelengths at a mid-band audio frequency, and [ each said at least one incidental microphone ] configured to produce a second [ respective incidental ] audio signal containing a second sampling of at least said unwanted background noise that has not previously been measured or characterized; and
a signal processor configured to dynamically jointly process said first [ principal audio ] and second [ at least one said incidental ] audio signals [ signal] , without reference to noise profiles or filters constructed in advance, by
receiving and processing said first [ principal ] audio signal to determine a first set of individual spectral components at a set of predetermined frequencies;
receiving and processing [ the ] at least [ one ] said second [ incidental ] audio signal to determine [ at least ] one or more additional sets [ set ] of individual spectral components at said set of predetermined frequencies; and
dynamically combining corresponding spectral components from said first set and [ the at least ] one or more of said additional sets [ set ] to obtain a combined set of spectral components in which unwanted background noise components are reduced compared to wanted speech components; and
generating an output audio waveform solely from the combined set of spectral components, without filtering or suppressing noise by reference to a predetermined noise profile, in which the ratio of the wanted speech to unwanted noise is greater than the corresponding ratio for either the first [ principal ] or the second [ any of the at least one said incidental ] audio signal [ s ] alone.