Patent ID: 8135586

Claim:
A method for estimating noise by using harmonics of a voice signal, the method comprising the steps of: (a) estimating harmonic components in a frame of an input sound signal; (b) using the estimated harmonic components, computing a Voice Presence Probability (VPP) on the frame of the input sound signal; (c) determining a weight of an equation necessary to estimate a noise spectrum, depending on the computed VPP utilizing: N ( k,t )=α( k,t ) N ( k,t− 1)+(1−α( k,t )) Y ( k,t ), where N(k, t) represents the noise spectrum, Y(k, t) represents a spectrum of the input sound signal, k represents a frequency index, t represents a frame index and α(k, t) represents the weight; and (d) estimating the noise spectrum by using the determined weight and the equation, and updating the noise spectrum.