A blind speech enhancement algorithm for the suppression of late reverberation and noise

This paper proposes a new speech enhancement algorithm for the suppression of background noise and late reverberation without a priori knowledge. A generalized spectral weighting rule based on estimations for the spectral variances of the late reverberant speech and background noise is used for speech enhancement. This allows to suppress speech distortions due to late room reflections without knowledge about the complete room impulse response. In contrast to existing methods, all needed quantities are estimated entire blindly from the reverberant and noisy speech signal. The new algorithm has also a low signal delay which is important, e.g., for speech enhancement in mobile communication devices or hearing aids.