The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 07, 1996
Filed:
Jun. 30, 1994
John C Baumhauer, Jr, Indianapolis, IN (US);
Jeffrey P McAteer, Fishers, IN (US);
Alan D Michel, Noblesville, IN (US);
Kevin D Willis, Owensboro, KY (US);
AT&T Corp., Murray Hill, NJ (US);
Abstract
The long term average broad band gains of a plurality of individual signal channels, associated with a corresponding plurality of microphone elements, are electronically and dynamically adapted to one another. This is realized by periodically and dynamically processing the signals from the individual microphone elements. More specifically, the processing is such that the long term average broad band gain of the signal channels of the individual microphone elements is dynamically adjusted, an energy estimate of each microphone signal channel is averaged over the long term and the difference in energy between the signal channels is used to readjust the long term average broad band gain of the microphone signal channels to minimize those differences. In one embodiment, the adjustment is realized by obtaining an estimate of the energy of the adjusted signal in each microphone signal channel, obtaining the differences between the energy estimates and averaging the difference over the long term to obtain a gain differential correction factor which is used to readjust the long term broad band gain of at least one of the microphone signal channels to minimize the gain difference between the microphone signal channels. In another embodiment, a long term estimate of the energy in each microphone signal channel is obtained. A ratio of the energy estimates is obtained and used to adjust the long term average broad band gain of at least one of the microphone signal channels to equalize the gain in the microphone signal channels.