Desired-speech signal cancellation by microphone arrays in reverberant rooms

The authors address the problem of cancellation of a desired signal in a head-worn microphone array processor. The effect of reverberation-induced multipath on a constrained minimum variance beamformer is considered. Constrained power minimization algorithms are particularly susceptible to this desired-signal cancellation. The conditions are evaluated under which the cancellation of a desired-speech signal occurs for a head-worn array of microphones in a reverberant room. The effects of acoustic headshadow are incorporated in a simulated array processor. Room reverberation effects are also modeled. The acoustic parameters investigated include room size, average wall absorption, and speaker-to-listener distance. Distortion-based speech intelligibility measures are used to assess the desired-speech cancellation