Patent ID: 7561701

Claim:
A method for determining the direction of incidence of an incoming audio signal from an acoustic source to a directional microphone system, having at least two microphones, comprising the steps of: detecting said incoming audio signal with said at least two microphones and, in each of said at least two microphones, producing an output microphone signal therefrom; generating at least two phase-shifted directional microphone signals by phase shifting at least one output microphone signal relative to another output microphone signal and combining the phase-shifted output microphone signals with respective weightings, the respective weightings defining a direction-dependent sensitivity distribution, having a minimum in one direction, for the respective directional microphone signals; assessing each of said directional microphone signals with respect to a quantity that indicates an influence, on the respective directional microphone signal, by the associated direction-dependent sensitivity distribution; and comparing the respective quantities of the respective directional microphone signals with each other to identify a quantity having an extreme value, and determining the direction of incidence of said incoming audio signal as being the direction at which the minimum of the direction-dependent sensitivity distribution for the directional microphone signal having said extreme value is located.