Abstract

Introduction Microphone-array systems can be used to determine the positions of active talkers and can be electronically steered to provide spatially-selective speech acquisition. Since it is steered electronically, a microphone-array's directivity pattern can be updated rapidly to follow a moving talker or to switch between several alternating or simultaneous talkers. These features make microphone-arrays a desirable alternative to single-microphone systems for hands-free speech acquisition, especially those involving multiple or moving sources. Furthermore, the ability of microphone-array systems to determine talker location makes them attractive for use in multimedia teleconferencing systems where the location of the talker can be used not only for steering the directivity of the microphonearray, but also for pointing cameras or determining binaural cues for stereo imaging. In microphone-array systems, a directly observable signal characteristic is the time difference of arr

Citations