Patent ID: 10863296

Abstract:
A system configured to detect microphone failure and optimize settings using remaining functional microphones. For example, a device may detect a defective (e.g., nonfunctional or malfunctioning) microphone when an energy level for the defective microphone is lower than a threshold value for a period of time. After detecting the defective microphone, the device may update configuration settings by reassigning microphones (e.g., selecting a functional microphone instead of the defective microphone) and/or by calculating new configuration settings accordingly (e.g., excluding a nonfunctional microphone or compensating for an attenuation or phase shift of a malfunctioning microphone). For example, the system may recalculate beamformer coefficients using the remaining microphones, which may improve a performance of the device (e.g., wakeword detection, automatic speech recognition (ASR), etc.) and result in only a marginal performance degradation relative to fully-functioning microphones.