Patent ID: 7020257

Claim:
A system that uses voice activity detection to facilitate speaker tracking in a distributed conferencing system, comprising: a system communication bus; a plurality of nodes connected to said system communication bus, each of said plurality of nodes operating as a local node or a non-local node, said local node comprising: a voice activity detector module including a plurality of voice activity detectors for receiving signals from each of a plurality of corresponding local participants connected to said local node and for classifying said signals as voice or noise based upon analysis of measured features of said signals, and for producing an indication of a classification of each of said signals; a feature extraction module including a plurality of feature extractors, each of said feature extractors being connected to a corresponding voice activity detector and to local participant signals for measuring at least one feature of each of said local participant signals classified as voice; a single core speaker tracker, connected to said feature extractor module and said local participant signals for determining a number of signals for speaker tracking within said local participant input signals by comparison of said feature; and a multi-core speaker tracker, connected to an output of said single core speaker tracker, for comparing measured features from said non-local node received via said system communication bus with said measured features from said local participant signals to determine, which signals from said local participant signals and signals from said non-local node will be transmitted to participants of said local node.