Patents by Inventor Jacob Benesty
Jacob Benesty has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
-
Patent number: 11546691Abstract: A binaural beamformer comprising two beamforming filters may be communicatively coupled to a microphone array to generates two beamforming outputs, one for the left ear and the other for the right ear. The beamforming filters may be configured in such a way that they are orthogonal to each other to make white noise components in the binaural outputs substantially uncorrelated and desired signal components in the binaural outputs highly correlated. As a result, the human auditory system may better separate the desired signal from white noise and intelligibility of the desired signal may be improved.Type: GrantFiled: June 4, 2020Date of Patent: January 3, 2023Assignee: Northwestern Polytechnical UniversityInventors: Jingdong Chen, Yuzhu Wang, Jilu Jin, Gongping Huang, Jacob Benesty
-
Publication number: 20220248135Abstract: A binaural beamformer comprising two beamforming filters may be communicatively coupled to a microphone array to generates two beamforming outputs, one for the left ear and the other for the right ear. The beamforming filters may be configured in such a way that they are orthogonal to each other to make white noise components in the binaural outputs substantially uncorrelated and desired signal components in the binaural outputs highly correlated. As a result, the human auditory system may better separate the desired signal from white noise and intelligibility of the desired signal may be improved.Type: ApplicationFiled: June 4, 2020Publication date: August 4, 2022Applicant: Northwestern Polytechnical UniversityInventors: Jingdong CHEN, Yuzhu Wang, Jilu Jin, Gongping Huang, Jacob Benesty
-
Patent number: 11159879Abstract: A differential microphone array includes a plurality of microphones situated on a substantially planar platform and a processing device, communicatively coupled to the plurality of microphones, to receive a plurality of electronic signals generated by the plurality of microphones responsive to a sound source and execute a minimum-norm beamformer to calculate an estimate of the sound source based on the plurality of electronic signals, wherein the minimum-norm beamformer is determined subject to a constraint that an approximation of a beampattern associated with the differential microphone array substantially matches a target beampattern.Type: GrantFiled: July 16, 2018Date of Patent: October 26, 2021Assignee: Northwestern Polytechnical UniversityInventors: Jingdong Chen, Gongping Huang, Jacob Benesty
-
Publication number: 20210185436Abstract: A differential microphone array includes a plurality of microphones situated on a substantially planar platform and a processing device, communicatively coupled to the plurality of microphones, to receive a plurality of electronic signals generated by the plurality of microphones responsive to a sound source and execute a minimum-norm beamformer to calculate an estimate of the sound source based on the plurality of electronic signals, wherein the minimum-norm beamformer is determined subject to a constraint that an approximation of a beampattern associated with the differential microphone array substantially matches a target beampattern.Type: ApplicationFiled: July 16, 2018Publication date: June 17, 2021Applicant: Northwestern Polytechnical UniversityInventors: Jingdong CHEN, Gongping HUANG, Jacob BENESTY
-
Patent number: 9930448Abstract: A differential microphone array includes a plurality of microphones situated on a substantially planar platform, the plurality of microphones including a total number (M) of microphones and at least two subsets of the plurality of microphones situated along at least two substantially concentric ellipses with respect to a center, and a processing device, communicatively coupled to the plurality of microphones, to receive a plurality of electronic signals generated by the plurality of microphones responsive to a sound source and execute a minimum-norm beamformer to calculate an estimate of the sound source based on the plurality of electronic signals, in which the minimum-norm beamformer has a differential order (N), and wherein M>N+1.Type: GrantFiled: November 9, 2016Date of Patent: March 27, 2018Assignee: NORTHWESTERN POLYTECHNICAL UNIVERSITYInventors: Jingdong Chen, Gongping Huang, Jacob Benesty
-
Patent number: 9749745Abstract: A differential microphone array includes a number (M) of microphone sensors for converting sound to a number of electrical signals, and a processor, operably coupled to the microphone sensors, to specify a target differential order (N) for the differential microphone array, and wherein M>N+1, specify a steering matrix D comprising N+1 steering vectors, calculate a respective one of a plurality of linearly specify a steering matrix D comprising N+1 steering vectors-constrained minimum variance filters based on the steering matrix, apply the respective one of the plurality of linearly-constrained minimum variance filters to a respective one of the electrical signals to calculate a respective frequency response of the electrical signals, wherein the respective frequency response comprises a plurality of components associated with a plurality of subbands, and sum the frequency responses of the electrical signals with respect to each subband to calculate an estimated frequency spectrum of the sound.Type: GrantFiled: December 28, 2015Date of Patent: August 29, 2017Assignee: Northwestern Polytechnical UniversityInventors: Jingdong Chen, Jacob Benesty
-
Patent number: 9560463Abstract: A system and method relate to receiving, by a processing device, a plurality of sound signals captured at a plurality of microphone sensors, wherein the plurality of sound signals are from a sound source, and wherein a number (M) of the plurality of microphone sensors is greater than three, determining a number (K) of layers for a multistage minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamformer based on the number (M) of the plurality of microphone sensors, wherein the number (K) of layers is greater than one, and wherein each layer of the multistage MVDR beamformer comprises one or more mini-length MVDR beamformers, and executing the multistage MVDR beamformer to the plurality of sound signals to calculate an estimate of the sound source.Type: GrantFiled: July 7, 2015Date of Patent: January 31, 2017Assignee: Northwestern Polytechnical UniversityInventors: Jingdong Chen, Chao Pan, Jacob Benesty
-
Publication number: 20160277862Abstract: A system and method relate to receiving, by a processing device, a plurality of sound signals captured at a plurality of microphone sensors, wherein the plurality of sound signals are from a sound source, and wherein a number (M) of the plurality of microphone sensors is greater than three, determining a number (K) of layers for a multistage minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamformer based on the number (M) of the plurality of microphone sensors, wherein the number (K) of layers is greater than one, and wherein each layer of the multistage MVDR beamformer comprises one or more mini-length MVDR beamformers, and executing the multistage MVDR beamformer to the plurality of sound signals to calculate an estimate of the sound source.Type: ApplicationFiled: July 7, 2015Publication date: September 22, 2016Inventors: Jingdong Chen, Chao Pan, Jacob Benesty
-
Publication number: 20160134969Abstract: A differential microphone array includes a number (M) of microphone sensors for converting sound to a number of electrical signals, and a processor, operably coupled to the microphone sensors, to specify a target differential order (N) for the differential microphone array, and wherein M>N+1, specify a steering matrix D comprising N+1 steering vectors, calculate a respective one of a plurality of linearly specify a steering matrix D comprising N+1 steering vectors-constrained minimum variance filters based on the steering matrix, apply the respective one of the plurality of linearly-constrained minimum variance filters to a respective one of the electrical signals to calculate a respective frequency response of the electrical signals, wherein the respective frequency response comprises a plurality of components associated with a plurality of subbands, and sum the frequency responses of the electrical signals with respect to each subband to calculate an estimated frequency spectrum of the sound.Type: ApplicationFiled: December 28, 2015Publication date: May 12, 2016Inventors: Jingdong Chen, Jacob Benesty
-
Patent number: 9237391Abstract: A differential microphone array (DMA) is provided that includes a number (M) of microphone sensors for converting a sound to a number of electrical signals and a processor that is configured to apply linearly-constrained minimum variance filters on the electrical signals over a time window to calculate frequency responses of the electrical signals over a plurality of subbands and sum the frequency responses of the electrical signals for each subband to calculate an estimated frequency spectrum of the sound.Type: GrantFiled: December 4, 2012Date of Patent: January 12, 2016Assignee: Northwestern Polytechnical UniversityInventors: Jacob Benesty, Jingdong Chen
-
Publication number: 20150163577Abstract: A differential microphone array (DMA) is provided that includes a number (M) of microphone sensors for converting a sound to a number of electrical signals and a processor that is configured to apply linearly-constrained minimum variance filters on the electrical signals over a time window to calculate frequency responses of the electrical signals over a plurality of subbands and sum the frequency responses of the electrical signals for each subband to calculate an estimated frequency spectrum of the sound.Type: ApplicationFiled: December 4, 2012Publication date: June 11, 2015Applicant: NORTHWESTERN POLYTECHNICAL UNIVERSITYInventors: Jacob Benesty, Jingdong Chen
-
Patent number: 8583429Abstract: A system and method may receive a single-channel speech input captured via a microphone. For each current frame of speech input, the system and method may (a) perform a time-frequency transformation on the input signal over L (L>1) frames including the current frame to obtain an extended observation vector of the current frame, data elements in the extended observation vector representing the coefficients of the time-frequency transformation of the L frames of the speech input, (b) compute second-order statistics of the extended observation vector and of noise, and (c) construct a noise reduction filter for the current frame of the speech input based on the second-order statistics of the extended observation vector and the second-order statistics of noise.Type: GrantFiled: February 1, 2011Date of Patent: November 12, 2013Assignee: Wevoice Inc.Inventors: Jacob Benesty, Yiteng Huang
-
Publication number: 20120197636Abstract: A system and method may receive a single-channel speech input captured via a microphone. For each current frame of speech input, the system and method may (a) perform a time-frequency transformation on the input signal over L (L>1) frames including the current frame to obtain an extended observation vector of the current frame, data elements in the extended observation vector representing the coefficients of the time-frequency transformation of the L frames of the speech input, (b) compute second-order statistics of the extended observation vector and of noise, and (c) construct a noise reduction filter for the current frame of the speech input based on the second-order statistics of the extended observation vector and the second-order statistics of noise.Type: ApplicationFiled: February 1, 2011Publication date: August 2, 2012Inventors: Jacob Benesty, Yiteng Huang
-
Patent number: 7693291Abstract: The invention is a method and apparatus for frequency-domain adaptive filtering that has broad applications such as to equalizers, but is particularly suitable for use in acoustic echo cancellation circuits for stereophonic and other multiple channel teleconferencing systems. The method and apparatus utilizes a frequency-domain recursive least squares criterion that minimizes the error signal in the frequency-domain. In order to reduce the complexity of the algorithm, a constraint is removed resulting in an unconstrained frequency-domain recursive least mean squares method and apparatus. A method and apparatus for selecting an optimal adaptation step for the UFLMS is disclosed. The method and apparatus is generalized to the multiple channel case and exploits the cross-power spectra among all of the channels.Type: GrantFiled: November 9, 2007Date of Patent: April 6, 2010Assignee: Agere Systems Inc.Inventors: Jacob Benesty, Dennis Raymond Morgan
-
Publication number: 20080118075Abstract: The invention is a method and apparatus for frequency-domain adaptive filtering that has broad applications such as to equalizers, but is particularly suitable for use in acoustic echo cancellation circuits for stereophonic and other multiple channel teleconferencing systems. The method and apparatus utilizes a frequency-domain recursive least squares criterion that minimizes the error signal in the frequency-domain. In order to reduce the complexity of the algorithm, a constraint is removed resulting in an unconstrained frequency-domain recursive least mean squares method and apparatus. A method and apparatus for selecting an optimal adaptation step for the UFLMS is disclosed. The method and apparatus is generalized to the multiple channel case and exploits the cross-power spectra among all of the channels.Type: ApplicationFiled: November 9, 2007Publication date: May 22, 2008Applicant: Agere Systems Inc.Inventors: Jacob Benesty, Dennis Raymond Morgan
-
Patent number: 7310425Abstract: The invention is a method and apparatus for frequency-domain adaptive filtering that has broad applications such as to equalizers, but is particularly suitable for use in acoustic echo cancellation circuits for stereophonic and other multiple channel teleconferencing systems. The method and apparatus utilizes a frequency-domain recursive least squares criterion that minimizes the error signal in the frequency-domain. In order to reduce the complexity of the algorithm, a constraint is removed resulting in an unconstrained frequency-domain recursive least mean squares method and apparatus. A method and apparatus for selecting an optimal adaptation step for the UFLMS is disclosed. The method and apparatus is generalized to the multiple channel case and exploits the cross-power spectra among all of the channels.Type: GrantFiled: December 28, 1999Date of Patent: December 18, 2007Assignee: Agere Systems Inc.Inventors: Jacob Benesty, Dennis Raymond Morgan
-
Patent number: 7136437Abstract: A signal detection technique for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications systems embodied in a method and apparatus for detecting a plurality of transmitted signals with use of a plurality of receiving antennas. An iterative procedure decodes one of a plurality of transmitted signals at each iteration using an intermediate matrix at each iteration to determine the transmitted signal to be decoded. The intermediate matrix for each successive iteration is advantageously computed in a recursive manner with use of a Schur complement operation performed based on the inverse of a modified version of the intermediate matrix used in the previous iteration.Type: GrantFiled: July 17, 2002Date of Patent: November 14, 2006Assignee: Lucent Technologies Inc.Inventors: Jacob Benesty, Jingdong Chen, Yiteng Arden Huang
-
Patent number: 7072465Abstract: A robust adaptive filter for use in a network echo canceller or other digital signal processing application utilizes a coefficient vector update device that, through the application of fast converging algorithms to a fast impulse response filter yields fast convergence of the adaptive filter's characteristics with the avoidance of divergence due to the onset of double talk. Robustness is also provided, via an adaptive scale non-linearity device which applies an adaptive scale non-linearity to the filter algorithms fed to the fast impulse response filter by the coefficient vector update device, so that the samples of an echo signal to be cancelled which are taken during the onset of double talk can be handled in such a manner that after the double talk detector causes adaptation to cease, the initial, potentially disturbing samples do not cause significant divergence in the filter system.Type: GrantFiled: January 6, 1999Date of Patent: July 4, 2006Inventors: Jacob Benesty, Tomas Fritz Gaensler, Steven Leslie Gay, Man Mohan Sondhi
-
Patent number: 7051246Abstract: A method for calculating an estimate of the clock skew between a sender's clock and a receiver's clock in a packet-based communications network. An adaptive algorithm is employed in which a recursive least squares approach is used to calculate an estimate of the clock skew based on the transmission of a given (i e., the “current”) packet, which estimate is further based on a previous estimate thereof (“a first approximation” thereof). This illustrative process then iterates with each new packet, producing increasingly accurate estimates of the clock skew.Type: GrantFiled: January 15, 2003Date of Patent: May 23, 2006Assignee: Lucent Technologies Inc.Inventor: Jacob Benesty
-
Method and apparatus for passive acoustic source localization for video camera steering applications
Patent number: 6826284Abstract: A real-time passive acoustic source localization system for video camera steering advantageously determines the relative delay between the direct paths of two estimated channel impulse responses. The illustrative system employs an approach referred to herein as the “adaptive eigenvalue decomposition algorithm” (AEDA) to make such a determination, and then advantageously employs a “one-step least-squares algorithm” (OSLS) for purposes of acoustic source localization, providing the desired features of robustness, portability, and accuracy in a reverberant environment. The AEDA technique directly estimates the (direct path) impulse response from the sound source to each of a pair of microphones, and then uses these estimated impulse responses to determine the time delay of arrival (TDOA) between the two microphones by measuring the distance between the first peaks thereof (i.e., the first significant taps of the corresponding transfer functions).Type: GrantFiled: February 4, 2000Date of Patent: November 30, 2004Assignee: Agere Systems Inc.Inventors: Jacob Benesty, Gary Wayne Elko, Yiteng Huang