Speech enhancement with microphone array using a multi beam adaptive noise suppressor

Abstract

This paper presents a new speech enhancement method with microphone array for the joint suppression of coherent and diffuse noise. The proposed method is based on combined technique: target and noise steering beamforming and adaptive noise suppression. The microphone array forms two beams steered in the directions of target speaker and of noise source. The signal of reference beam is used to suppress the noise in primary channel. The proposed algorithm of Adaptive Noise Suppressor (ANS) is based on the transformation of the signal spectrum of the reference channel into the noise spectrum of the main channel using noise equalizer and algorithm of dual channel spectral subtraction. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is confirmed in varying real life coherent and diffuse noise conditions. The experimental results show that proposed method is an efficient procedure for speech quality improvement in real life noisy and reverberant conditions with SNRs down to −5 dB and reverberation time up to 0.88 s.