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Using Intermicrophone Correlation to Detect Speech in Spatially Separated Noise

EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing volume 2006, Article number: 093920 (2006) Cite this article

Abstract

This paper describes a system for determining intervals of "high" and "low" signal-to-noise ratios when the desired signal and interfering noise arise from distinct spatial regions. The correlation coefficient between two microphone signals serves as the decision variable in a hypothesis test. The system has three parameters: center frequency and bandwidth of the bandpass filter that prefilters the microphone signals, and threshold for the decision variable. Conditional probability density functions of the intermicrophone correlation coefficient are derived for a simple signal scenario. This theoretical analysis provides insight into optimal selection of system parameters. Results of simulations using white Gaussian noise sources are in close agreement with the theoretical results. Results of more realistic simulations using speech sources follow the same general trends and illustrate the performance achievable in practical situations. The system is suitable for use with two microphones in mild-to-moderate reverberation as a component of noise-reduction algorithms that require detecting intervals when a desired signal is weak or absent.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Broadband Video Compression Group, Broadcom Corporation, Andover, MA, 01810, USA

    Ashish Koul

  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room E25-518, Cambridge, MA, 02139-4307, USA

    Julie E. Greenberg

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  1. Ashish Koul
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  2. Julie E. Greenberg
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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Koul, A., Greenberg, J.E. Using Intermicrophone Correlation to Detect Speech in Spatially Separated Noise. EURASIP J. Adv. Signal Process. 2006, 093920 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1155/ASP/2006/93920

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