US 7,567,678 B2
Microphone array method and system, and speech recognition method and system using the same
Dong-geon Kong, Busan (Korea, Republic of); Chang-kyu Choi, Seoul (Korea, Republic of); Seok-won Bang, Seoul (Korea, Republic of); and Bon-young Lee, Gyeonggi-do (Korea, Republic of)
Assigned to Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Suwon-Si (Korea, Republic of)
Filed on May 03, 2004, as Appl. No. 10/836,207.
Claims priority of application No. 10-2003-0028340 (KR), filed on May 02, 2003; and application No. 10-2004-0013029 (KR), filed on Feb. 26, 2004.
Prior Publication US 2004/0220800 A1, Nov. 04, 2004
Int. Cl. H04R 3/00 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 381—92  [381/94.3; 381/98; 704/233] 49 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A microphone array system comprising:
an input unit to receive sound signals using a plurality of microphones;
a frequency splitter to split each sound signal received through the input unit into a plurality of narrowband signals;
an average spatial covariance matrix estimator which uses spatial smoothing to obtain a spatial covariance matrix for each frequency component of the sound signal, by which spatial covariance matrices for a plurality of virtual sub-arrays, which are configured in the plurality of microphones, are obtained with respect to each frequency component of the sound signal processed by the frequency splitter and an average spatial covariance matrix is calculated;
a signal source location detector to detect an incidence angle of the sound signal according to the average spatial covariance matrix calculated using the spatial smoothing;
a signal distortion compensator to calculate a weight for each frequency component of the sound signal based on the incidence angle of the sound signal and multiply the calculated weight by each frequency component, thereby compensating for distortion of each frequency component; and
a signal restoring unit to restore a sound signal using the distortion compensated frequency components,
wherein the spatial smoothing is performed according to an equation

OG Complex Work Unit Drawing
where “p” indicates a number of the virtual sub-arrays, xk(i) indicates a vector of an i-th sub-array microphone input signal, “k” indicates a k-th frequency component in a narrowband, and Rk indicates an average spatial covariance matrix.