Patent ID: 8589152

Claim:
A voice detection device comprising: a band-based power calculation unit that calculates, for a plurality of subbands each having a preset frequency band width, a total of values of sub-band voice power entered from each of a plurality of microphones; a band-based noise estimation unit that estimates noise power for the plurality of subbands; a band-based signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) calculation unit that, for the plurality of subbands, for each of said microphones, calculates a sub-band SNR, and that outputs a largest sub-band SNR of said sub-band SNRs for each microphone as being an SNR of each respective microphone; and a voice/non-voice decision unit that determines a voice/non-voice for each microphone using said SNR of each microphone; wherein said band-based noise estimation unit compares, for a subband, said sub-band voice power from one microphone to another microphone to select one microphone with a larger sub-band voice power and another microphone with a smaller sub-band voice power; said band-based noise estimation unit setting, for the subband, the subband voice power of the microphone with the smaller sub-band voice power as the sub-band noise power of the microphone with the larger sub-band voice power.