Patent ID: 6993481

Claim:
A method for detecting speech activity for a signal, the method comprising the steps of: extracting a plurality of features from a digitized signal, wherein: the plurality of features alone cannot recreate the digitized signal, and the digitized signal is a digital representation of the signal; modeling a first and a second probability density functions (PDFs) of the plurality of features, wherein: the first PDF models active speech features for the digitized signal, the second PDF models inactive speech features for the digitized signal, and at least one of the first or second PDFs uses a non-Gaussian model; adapting the first and second PDFs to respond to changes in the digitized signal over time; probability-based classifying of the digitized signal based, at least in part, on the plurality of features; and distinguishing speech in the digitized signal based, at least in part, upon the probability-based classifying step.