An adaptive blind beamformer with an integrated single-channel noise reduction method for robust realtime blind speech extraction

The performance of single-channel temporal noise reduction methods generally deteriorate in high noise environments, whereas spatial beamformers can maintain some level of speech enhancement. This paper presents a solution where a low complexity single-channel noise reduction method is integrated into the feedback control loop of an adaptive blind beamformer with the purpose of robust blind speech extraction in high noise environments. The proposed combined system outperforms each of the individual methods with respect to signal-to-interference ratio improvement for a wide range of operating conditions, and where the loss in estimated perceptual speech quality due to the combined system is tolerably low. Furthermore, the excess processing load in a hardware solution is comparatively insignificant for the proposed extended approach.