Patent ID: 7246058

Claim:
A system for detecting voiced and unvoiced speech in acoustic signals having varying levels of background noise, comprising: at least two microphones that receive the acoustic signals; at least one voicing sensor that receives physiological information associated with human voicing activity; and at least one processor coupled among the microphones and the voicing sensor, wherein the at least one processor; generates cross correlation data between the physiological information and an acoustic signal received at one of the two microphones; identifies information of the acoustic signals as voiced speech when the cross correlation data corresponding to a portion of the acoustic signal received at the one receiver exceeds a correlation threshold; generates difference parameters between the acoustic signals received at each of the two receivers, wherein the difference parameters are representative of the relative difference in signal gain between portions of the received acoustic signals; identifies information of the acoustic signals as unvoiced speech when the difference parameters exceed a gain threshold; and identifies information of the acoustic signals as noise when the difference parameters are less than the gain threshold.