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International Workshop on Hands-Free Speech Communication (HSC2001)April 9-11, 2001 |
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International Workshop on Hands-Free Speech Communication (HSC2001)April 9-11, 2001 |
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The telephone, invented more than 140 years ago, has changed very little with respect to aconstic design in the last 40 years. The most recent technological improvements were the replacement of the carbon microphone with an electret microphone and the development of the speakerphone for hands-free telephony in the early sixties. It might seem quite surprising that in spite of the rapid changes in communication systems: digital switching, digital wireless, packet-based data communications and the like, that very little has changed to the acoustic front-end in telephony systems. For instance, with the general availability of broadband communication networks, why have we not significantly increased the audio commnnication bandwidth? Why don't we see stereo or multichannel in telephony and communication systems? Why don't we see more ubiquitous adoption of voice recognition in consumer products? These are good questions when one ponders the explosion of inexpensive digital signal processing integrated circuits combined with the current bandwidth of communication systems and those that are about to be introduced. Clearly front-end acoustic signal processing will play a large role in addressing these questions.
In our increasingly a mobile society we find that hands-free operation of communication systems is becoming more and more the norm, whether we talk to other humans or to machines. There are significant challenges in enabling high quality speech communication in difficult acoustic environments. Microphone arrays are an enabling technology for hands-free communication since these systems offer directional gain to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. This paper will address some new possibilities as well as outstanding research issues that remain.
Bibliographic reference. Elko, Gary W. (2001): "Microphone arrays", In HSC2001, 11-14.