Patent ID: 6618485
Filing Date: 2003-09-09
Classification: H04R

Abstract:
A microphone array comprising a plurality of real microphones arranged in predetermined positions, at least one virtual microphone, and a sound signal estimator for estimating a sound signal received by the virtual microphone,wherein the sound signal estimator comprises: a sound signal divider for dividing a sound signal, that is one of several sound signals coming from an arbitrary number of sound sources in arbitrary directions and is received by a predetermined one of the real microphones, into components by using wave equations, each component corresponding to one coordinate axis direction in a coordinate system defined on the basis of positions of the plurality of real microphones; a sound signal component estimator for estimating a virtual microphone sound signal component corresponding to a predetermined coordinate axis direction in the coordinate system, based on the sound signal received by the predetermined real microphone and the sound signal component corresponding to the predetermined coordinate axis direction divided by the sound signal divider; and a sound signal component adder for adding the sound signal component corresponding to the coordinate axis direction divided by the sound signal divider and the sound signal component corresponding to the coordinate axis direction estimated by the sound signal component estimator.