James G. Ryan
Inst. for Microstructural Sci., Natl. Res. Council, Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6, Canada
Microphone pickup of sound in typical rooms is impaired by the combined effects of reverberation and noise. This degrades speech intelligibility and quality particularly in applications where the microphone is located far away from the talker. Recent advances in microphone array technology suggest a potential solution to such problems. This paper gives an overview of current microphone array techniques and discusses the potential benefits for speech communication. Various criteria for measuring the performance of a microphone array are described. A flexible, experimental microphone array intended for research in speech communications is under construction and will be described.