Convention Paper
Performance Study of a Compact 2-Sensor Noise Cancelling System
AES Convention 116 · Paper 6160 · May 2004
Abstract
In this paper, we propose a compact directional noise-cancelling device which consists of a differential microphone formed by two omni-directional microphones connected in an endfire orientation. By making use of adaptive beamforming for improved directionality, and echo shaping, a form of nonlinear speech enhancement, the proposed device is positioned to tackle noise found in real environments, which is typically a mixture of directional, stationary and non-stationary interferences. Performance evaluation of our real-time implementation is based on the following criteria: 1) directionality, 2) distortions, and 3) speech quality as measured by the Mean-Opinion-Score (MOS), through subjective listening tests and using the ITU-T P.862 Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality tool. Our experimental results indicate an average interference suppression of as much as 22dB, and consistent improvement in speech quality.
