Microphone-Array Systems for Speech Recognition Input

An understanding of algorithmic and engineering techniques for the construction of a high-quality microphone array system for speech input to machines is the goal of this project; it implicitly assumes that wearing a head-mounted microphone, or sitting at a fixed location in front of a table microphone is most often an unacceptable imposition for a user of a speech recognizer. Rather, the array system should electronically track a particular talker in a small room having other talkers and noise sources and should provide a signal of quality comparable to that of the head-mounted microphone. In particular, the project is focused on the measurement of smallroom acoustic properties and the derivation of underlying mathematical algorithms for the acoustic field, for talker tracking and characterization, for array layout, for correlated and uncorrelated noise elimination, and for beamforming. Simultaneously, digital array systems are being designed, built, and used.