Source Enhancement and Suppression with Binaural Head Related Impulse Response Functions

Within the field of wireless communications, it has been known for a while that "echoes" in the channels can be used constructively to improve communication success factors, and not only as a destructive feature as in the case of inter-symbol interference. This is particularly true for so called MIMO (multiple input multiple output) systems. In this paper, we propose to use echoes constructively for the purpose of improving audio source separation and suppression of signals from unwanted directions. Whereas this problem has long been addressed within acoustic (spatial) array technology, this paper shows that the temporal dimension plays an important role. The different signal echoes arising from different direction-dependent paths that the signals may travel can be used to enhance the spatial array effects