Patent ID: 8219394

Claim:
A computing device configured to receive speech inputs, the computing device comprising: a microphone array having a plurality of microphones; a processor in operative communication with the microphone array; an analog-to-digital converter in operative communication with the microphone array and with the processor; and memory comprising instructions stored therein that are executable by the processor to: receive a plurality of digital sound signals from the analog-to-digital converter, each digital sound signal being based on an analog sound signal originating at the microphone array, receive a multi-channel speaker signal from a speaker signal source, for each digital sound signal, generate a monophonic approximation signal of the multi-channel speaker signal that approximates speaker sounds as received by the corresponding microphone, apply a linear acoustic echo canceller to suppress a first ambient sound portion of each digital sound signal based at least in part on the monophonic approximation signal, generate a combined directionally-adaptive sound signal from a combination of each digital sound signal based at least in part on a combination of time-invariant and adaptive beamforming techniques, and apply one or more nonlinear noise suppression techniques to suppress a second ambient sound portion of the combined directionally-adaptive sound signal based at least in part on a directional characteristic of the combined directionally-adaptive sound signal.