Patent ID: 11908456
Assignee: TENCENT TECHNOLOGY (SHENZHEN) COMPANY LIMITED
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. An azimuth estimation method performed at a computing device having one or more processors and memory storing a plurality of computer programs to be executed by the processor, the method comprising:
obtaining, in real time, multi-channel sampling signals and buffering the multi-channel sampling signals, wherein the multi-channel sampling signals are respectively obtained through N1 channels corresponding to N1 beams in N1 different directions;
performing wakeup word detection on one or more sampling signals of the multi-channel sampling signals, and determining a wakeup word detection score for each channel of the one or more sampling signals;
computing, upon a determination that the wakeup word detection scores of the one or more sampling signals indicates that a wakeup word exists in the one or more sampling signals, a time period from appearance to disappearance of the wakeup word based on the wakeup word detection scores, further including:
determining a time point of the appearance of the wakeup word as a starting time point at which a wakeup word detection score starts changing;
determining a time point of the disappearance of the wakeup word as an ending time point corresponding to the highest wakeup word detection score among the wakeup word detection scores; and
determining the time period from the appearance to the disappearance of the wakeup word according to the starting time point and the ending time point;

extracting a target sampling signal within the time period from the buffered multi-channel sampling signals;
performing a spatial spectrum estimation on the target sampling signal extracted within the time period to obtain a spatial spectrum estimation result indicating signal power strengths at N2 candidate azimuths, wherein N2 is different from N1; and
determining, among the N2 candidate azimuths, an azimuth of a target voice associated with the multi-channel sampling signals based on the spatial spectrum estimation result and a highest wakeup word detection score.