Abstract: A microphone shield system captures sound in adverse conditions. The system includes a microphone positioned within a membrane. The membrane is inflated around the microphone to form an enclosure. The inflated membrane passes signals within a selected frequency range. The membrane may block or attenuate signals above and/or below the frequency range to pass a desired sound with little surrounding interference.

Abstract: A system detects a speech segment that may include unvoiced, fully voiced, or mixed voice content. The system includes a digital converter that converts a time-varying input signal into a digital-domain signal. A window function passes signals within a programmed aural frequency range while substantially blocking signals above and below the programmed aural frequency range when multiplied by an output of the digital converter. A frequency converter converts the signals passing within the programmed aural frequency range into a plurality of frequency bins. A background voice detector estimates the strength of a background speech segment relative to the noise of selected portions of the aural spectrum. A noise estimator estimates a maximum distribution of noise to an average of an acoustic noise power of some of the plurality of frequency bins.

Abstract: A microphone shield system captures sound in adverse conditions. The system includes a microphone positioned within an enclosure. A membrane stretched across a portion of the enclosure passes signals within a selected frequency range. The membrane may block or attenuate signals above and/or below the frequency range to pass a desired sound with little surrounding interference.

Abstract: A signal enhancement system improves the quality of a noisy input signal. The system finds a low noise signal model which best matches the noisy input signal. Noisy portions of the input signal are replaced with portions of the low noise signal models. As the input signal increases in noise content, the output signal includes an increasing amount of the low noise signal model. The system thereby produces an output signal with very low noise which corresponds to the input signal.