Patent ID: 7171356

Claim:
A method of creating a statistical model of noise in a distributed speech recognition system, comprising: selecting one of a first power mode, a second power mode, and a third power mode to determine an amount of power to be drawn from a power source: determining when to provide a noise floor estimate based at least in part on the selected power mode; generating a parametric representation of the noise floor estimate when the noise floor estimate is provided; determining whether received data includes a parametric representation of noise; and creating a statistical model of noise feature vectors based on the parametric representation of the noise floor estimate; wherein the first power mode involves activating noise estimation and feature extraction components upon assertion of speech activity, the second power mode involves deactivating the noise estimation and feature extraction components after the speech activity ends, and a third power mode involves activating noise estimation and feature extraction components upon assertion of speech activity and allowing the noise estimation and feature extraction components to remain active as long as a speech-enabled application remains active.