Patent ID: 7415117

Claim:
A method for real-time design of beam sets for a microphone array from a set of pre-computed noise models, comprising using a computing device to: compute a set of complex-valued gains for each subband of a frequency-domain decomposition of microphone array signal inputs for each of a plurality of beam widths within a range of beam widths, said sets of complex-valued gains being computed from the pre-computed noise models in combination with known geometry and directivity of microphones comprising the microphone array; search the sets of complex-valued gains to identify a single set of complex-valued gains for each frequency-domain subband and for each of a plurality of target focus points around the microphone array; and wherein each said set of complex-valued gains is individually selected as the set of complex-valued gains having a lowest total noise energy relative to corresponding sets of complex-valued gains for each frequency-domain subband for each target focus point around the microphone array, and wherein each selected set of complex-valued gains is then provided as an entry in said beam set for the microphone array.