Abstract:
We propose a method for estimating the prior signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), which is used for calculating the Wiener filter for distant sound source extraction, from output signals of beamforming using statistical mapping based on the deep neural network (DNN). Since informative features to estimate the prior SNR are included in multiple beamforming outputs, the SNR can be accurately estimated by this mapping using the DNN. The proposed method was applied to a large microphone array, the design of which was optimized to form effective directivity patterns to extract distant sound sources. Experimental results proved that the target source was clearly extracted with the proposed method.