Spatial filter bank design for speech enhancement beamforming applications

In this paper, a new spatial filter bank design method for speech enhancement beamforming applications is presented. The aim of this design is to construct a set of different filter banks that would include the constraint of signal passage at one position (and closing in other positions corresponding to known disturbing sources). By performing the directional opening towards the desired location in the fixed filter bank structure, the beamformer is left with the task of tracking and suppressing the continuously emerging noise sources. This algorithm has been implemented in MATLAB and tested on real speech recordings conducted in a car hands-free communication situation. Results show that a reduction of the total complexity can be achieved while maintaining the noise suppression performance and reducing the speech distortion.