Multiple device noise reduction microphone array
View Patent ↗Various embodiments are directed to cooperation among communications devices having microphones to employ their microphones in unison to provide voice detection with noise reduction for voice communications. A first communications device comprises a processor circuit; a first microphone; an interface operative to communicatively couple the processor circuit to a network; and a storage communicatively coupled to the processor circuit and arranged to store a sequence of instructions operative on the processor circuit to store a first detected data that represents sounds detected by the first microphone; receive a second detected data via the network that represents sounds detected by a second microphone of a second communications device; subtractively sum the first and second data to create a processed data; and transmit the processed data to a third communications device. Other embodiments are described and claimed herein.
1. A first communications device comprising:
a processor circuit;
a first microphone;
an interface operative to communicatively couple the processor circuit to a network; and
a storage communicatively coupled to the processor circuit and arranged to store a sequence of instructions operative on the processor circuit to:
store a first detected data that represents sounds detected by the first microphone;
receive a second detected data via the network that represents sounds detected by a second microphone of a second communications device;
subtractively sum the first and second data to create a processed data; and
transmit the processed data to a third communications device.
2. The first communications device of claim 1 , comprising a first clock, the instructions operative on the processor circuit to:
signal the second communications device to synchronize the first clock with a second clock of the second communications device;
timestamp the first detected data with a time maintained by the first clock; and
align timestamps of the first and second detected data.
3. The first communications device of claim 1 , the instructions operative on the processor circuit to:
locate occurrences of an acoustic feature in both the first and second detected data;
determine a difference in time of occurrence of the acoustic feature in the first detected data and in the second detected data; and
align the first and second detected data based on the difference in time.
4. The first communications device of claim 1 , the instructions operative on the processor circuit to:
determine a distance between the first and second microphones; and
employ the distance between the first and second microphones as a weighting factor in subtractively summing the first and the second detected data.
5. The first communications device of claim 1 , the instructions operative on the processor circuit to subject a one of the first and second detected data that represents noise sounds to a transfer function prior to subtractively summing the first and second detected data.
6. The first communications device of claim 5 , the instructions operative on the processor circuit to:
operate the interface to vary a signal strength of signals transmitted to the second communications device via the network to detect a distance between the first and second microphones; and
derive the transfer function based at least on the distance between the first and second microphones.
7. The first communications device of claim 5 , the instructions operative on the processor circuit to:
operate an acoustic transducer of the first communications device to generate a test sound;
receive a signal from the second communications device via the network that indicates a time at which the second microphone detected the test sound;
determine a distance between the first and second microphones based on the time at which the second microphone detected the test sound; and
derive the transfer function based at least on the distance between the first and second microphones.
8. The first communications device of claim 5 , the instructions operative on the processor circuit to:
determine a distance between the first and second microphones; and
alter the transfer function based on the distance between the first and second microphones.
9. The first communications device of claim 5 , the instructions operative on the processor circuit to:
receive a signal via the network from the second communications device that specifies a characteristic of the second microphone; and
derive the transfer function based on a difference in characteristics between the first and second microphones.
10. The first communications device of claim 8 , the characteristic comprising microphone frequency response.
11. The first communications device of claim 1 , the interface operative to communicatively couple the processor circuit to the network comprises the interface arranged as a wired digital serial interface to couple the processor circuit to the network that includes a wired network.
12. The first communications device of claim 1 , the interface operative to communicatively couple the processor circuit to the network comprises the interface arranged as a radio frequency wireless interface to couple the processor circuit to the network that includes a wireless network.