• 한국소음진동공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국소음진동공학회 2005년도 춘계학술대회논문집
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• pp.334-337
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• 2005

The speech intelligibility is one of the most important factors in communication system. The speech intelligibility is related with speech to noise ratio. To enhance the speech to noise ratio, background noise reduction techniques are being developed. As a part of solution to noise reduction, this paper introduces directional microphone using beamforming method and speech filtering method. The directional microphone narrows the spatial range of processing signal into the direction of the target speech signal. The noise signal located in the same direction with speech still remains in the processing signal. To sort this mixed signal into speech and noise, as a following step, a speech-filtering method is applied to pick up only the speech signal from the processed signal. The speech filtering method is based on the characteristics of speech signal itself. The combined directional microphone and speech filtering method gives enhanced performance to speech intelligibility in communication system.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제36권5호
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• pp.772-782
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• 2014

Two-microphone binary mask speech enhancement (2mBMSE) has been of particular interest in recent literature and has shown promising results. Current 2mBMSE systems rely on spatial cues of speech and noise sources. Although these cues are helpful for directional noise sources, they lose their efficiency in diffuse noise fields. We propose a new system that is effective in both directional and diffuse noise conditions. The system exploits two features. The first determines whether a given time-frequency (T-F) unit of the input spectrum is dominated by a diffuse or directional source. A diffuse signal is certainly a noise signal, but a directional signal could correspond to a noise or speech source. The second feature discriminates between T-F units dominated by speech or directional noise signals. Speech enhancement is performed using a binary mask, calculated based on the proposed features. In both directional and diffuse noise fields, the proposed system segregates speech T-F units with hit rates above 85%. It outperforms previous solutions in terms of signal-to-noise ratio and perceptual evaluation of speech quality improvement, especially in diffuse noise conditions.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제32권3호
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• pp.198-206
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• 2011

Hearing devices like cochlear implant, vibrant soundbridge, etc. try to offer better sound for people. In hearing devices, several beamformers including conventional directional microphone are applicable to noise reduction. Each beamformer has different directional response and it could change sound intelligibility or quality for listeners. Therefore, we investigated the performance of three beamformers, which are first and second order directional microphone, and broadband beamformer(BBF) with a computer simulation assuming hearing device microphone configuration. We also calculated objective measurements which have been used to evaluate speech enhancement algorithms. In the simulation, a single speech and a single babble noisewere propagated from the front and $135^{\circ}$ azimuth degrees respectively. Microphones were configured in an end-fire array and the spacing was varied in comparison. With 3 cm spacing, BBF had about 3 dB higher enhanced SNR than that of directional microphones. However, enhancement of segmental SNR and frequency weighted segmental SNR were similar between the first order directional microphone and broadband beamformer. In addition when steady state noise was used, broadband beamformer showed the increased performance and had the highest enhanced SNR, and segmental SNR.

• 소음진동
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• 제4권2호
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• pp.187-198
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• 1994

This study is to describe the effects of the duct termination conditions conditions upon the active noise attenuation system. The adaptive filtering algorithm using FIR filter is implemented for duct noise attenuation. To avoid the instability caused by the acoustic feedback, two methods are considered. One is to use a compensating FIR filter. The other is to utilize uni-directional detecting microphone and uni-directional control speaker. Experimental results show that the reflections of sound from duct terminations greatly reduce the performance of ANC system. The directionality of detecting microphone and control speaker is a major factor to decide ANC performance. When there are some reflections from both duct terminations, the noise attenuation using finite FIR filter is not enough to model the duct plant. Especially, the reflection from the upstream termination reduces the noise attenuation in the frequencies related to the distance between control speaker and upstream termination. The performance of the noise attenuation is found to be largely enhanced by using uni-directional coupler, both on detecting microphone and control speaker, even if the duct system has an arbitrary termination conditions.

• 정보과학회 논문지
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• 제43권1호
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• pp.13-26
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• 2016

본 연구에서는 임의 공간에서 정사면체 형태의 마이크로폰 어레이(microphone array)를 이용하여 음원(sound source)추적 성능을 개선할 수 있는 알고리즘을 제안하였다. 음원추적 시스템은 마이크로폰 어레이의 각 마이크로폰에 도착하는 음원신호의 도착 지연시간(TDOA, Time Delay Of Arrival) 정보를 이용하여 음원의 방향성 정보를 추정한다. 임의 3차원 공간에서 음원추적을 위해서는 최소 3개 이상의 마이크로폰이 필요하다. 3개 마이크로폰으로 구성된 음원추적 시스템의 경우 만약 1개의 마이크로폰이라도 신호 오차가 발생한다면 정확한 음원 방향성 추정이 불가능하다. 본 연구에서는 이러한 문제점을 개선하기 위하여 1개의 마이크로폰을 추가한 정사면체 형태(tetrahedron shaper)의 마이크로폰 어레이를 구성하고 좌표변환 기법을 이용하여 주변 잡음이나 오류에 강인한 새로운 음원추적 알고리즘을 제안하였다. 제안 알고리즘의 성능을 입증하기 위하여 3개의 마이크로폰을 이용한 삼각형 기반 음원추적 시스템과 본 연구에서 제안한 정사면체 기반 음원추적 시스템에 대하여 실시간 비교 실험을 수행하였으며, 실험 결과 제안된 정사면체 기반의 시스템이 최대 약 16% 이상의 향상된 검출율을 보였다.

• 한국소음진동공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국소음진동공학회 2007년도 춘계학술대회논문집
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• pp.484-488
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• 2007

In this paper, the measurement system using the microphone array developed for analyzing cabin noise of the vehicle and its applications are discussed. The sensor is a three dimensional microphone array, the microphones and cameras are equipped on the rigid sphere. The cameras are used for acoustic visualization. As applications, the experiments in both reverberation chamber and anechoic chamber are discussed. These results show that this system is very useful to evaluate or improve the vehicle sound insulation performance.

• 한국소음진동공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국소음진동공학회 2003년도 추계학술대회논문집
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• pp.735-741
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• 2003

A simplified view of array design and application process was introduced. Array design is critical to achieve a successful phased array measurements. A planar microphone array is designed to produce optimum performance and also to fit economic requirement in integrating data acquisition system. Certain performance characteristics are of primary concern when designing arrays. These characteristics include array resolution, spatial aliasing and array sidelobe suppression. Every array has its directional pattern that shows such characteristics. Assuming that a monopole source is located in center, beam-patterns have been simulated varying measurement conditions such as number of sensors. array aperture size, distance between array and source, frequency of interest and so on. Sensor correction was conducted on very channel using magnitudes and phased of FRF with respect to a reference microphone channel. Then with a spiral type array, measurements have been made with two point sources of same frequency in order to investigate array resolving abilities. It is observed that higher frequency source achieves better resolution than lower one does.

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제34권1호
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• pp.24-33
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• 2013

To enhance the speech perception of hearing aid users in noisy environment, most hearing aid devices adopt various beamforming algorithms such as the first-order differential microphone (DM1) and the two-stage directional microphone (DM2) algorithms that maintain sounds from the direction of the interlocutor and reduce the ambient sounds from the other directions. However, these conventional algorithms represent poor directionality ability in low frequency area. Therefore, to enhance the speech perception of hearing aid uses in low frequency range, our group had suggested a fractional delay subtraction and integration (FDSI) algorithm and estimated its theoretical performance using computer simulation in previous article. In this study, we performed a KEMAR test in non-reverberant room that compares the performance of DM1, DM2, broadband beamforming (BBF), and proposed FDSI algorithms using several objective indices such as a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement, a segmental SNR (seg-SNR) improvement, a perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ), and an Itakura-Saito measure (IS). Experimental results showed that the performance of the FDSI algorithm was -3.26-7.16 dB in SNR improvement, -1.94-5.41 dB in segSNR improvement, 1.49-2.79 in PESQ, and 0.79-3.59 in IS, which demonstrated that the FDSI algorithm showed the highest improvement of SNR and segSNR, and the lowest IS. We believe that the proposed FDSI algorithm has a potential as a beamformer for digital hearing aid devices.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제31권3호
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• pp.197-204
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• 2012

본 연구에서는 마이크로폰에 입사되는 음성 신호를 거리의 변동에 의해 크기와 주파수 응답특성 변화를 최소화시키는 방법에 대한 연구를 하였다. 우선 마이크로폰과 음성음원 사이의 거리를 변화시키며 거리변화에 따른 응답특성을 측정하였다. 본 연구에 사용된 마이크로폰은 일반적으로 사용되는 마이크로폰 중에 무지향성 마이크로폰과 초단일지향성 마이크로폰, 단일지향성 마이크로폰 등, 3가지 종류의 마이크로폰을 선정하였다. 측정한 이들 마이크의 주파수 응답특성 변화 결과를 기준치와 비교하여 보정치를 구하고 이를 주파수 대역별로 변화된 음성신호를 원음과 근사하게 보상하도록 하였다. 저주파대역은 근접효과에 의한 증폭현상, 그리고 거리에 의한 감쇠효과를 보정하도록 하였다. 중음대역에서는 저음대역보다 거리의 변화에 의한 주파수특성 편차가 비교적 적었지만 음성정보신호에 중요한 영향을 주는 부분이기 때문에 기준신호와 비교하여 복원하도록 하였다. 고주파대역의 음성정보의 변화는 극히 미소하여 고주파대역 조정은 큰 문제가 없이 원음에 가깝게 복원되었다.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제16권1호
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• pp.47-53
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• 1997

이 논문은 원거리회의 환경에서 음성신호와 같은 광대역 신호를 다룰 수 있는 마이크로폰 어레이의 빔패턴(beam pattern)을 형성하는 효과적인 방법에 대하여 서술한다. 어레이의 변수를 반복적으로 변화시킴으로써, 측면롭의 높이를 조정하여 일정한 수준의 측면롭을 형성하며, 갱신된 측면롭을 대수적으로 찾지 않고 수치적으로 찾는 접근방법을 제안하였다. 어레이 계수나 마이크로폰 간격을 어레이변수로 사용하였으며, 마이크로폰 어레이 가시범위에 공간적으로 균일하게 입력되는 방향성잡음 또는 배경잡음을 효과적으로 줄일 수 있는 Dolph-Chebyshev형태의 최적화패턴을 형성하였다. 어레이 계수보다 마이크로폰 간격을 변화시키는 것이 광대역신호를 더 효과적으로 다룰 수 있는 최적화 패턴을 제공하는 것이 판명되었다. 또한 방향조정(scanning)상황 하에서 측면롭에 강한(robust)패턴을 형성할 수 있는 방법을 제안하였으며, 컴퓨터 실험결과를 제시하였다.