A Multimicrophone Voice Activity Detection System Based on Mutual Information
Fotios Talantzis, Anthony George Constantinides · Journal of the Audio Engineering Society · 2009
Voice activity detection systems attempt to replicate one of the basic operations of the human auditory system, namely, discrimination between voice and other ambient sounds. Most systems that work toward the solution of this problem use a single-microphone approach and rely on extensive training prior to its use. The performance of these systems relies heavily on reverberation and noise levels. A voice activity detection system is presented, which uses pairs of microphones to discern between a coherent acoustic source and spatially diffuse noise of low coherence. Measurement of coherency is performed using an information-theoretic metric that integrates a way to filter out more effectively the effect of reverberation and noise. Using extensive computer simulations, the effect of physical parameters, such as the relative positions of source and receivers, as well as effects of different design parameters are investigated. The optimal parameters are then used to examine the performance of the system in real-world experiments. Based on the conditions imposed by these parameters it is shown that the proposed system remains more robust than the reference systems in a variety of conditions.