Patent ID: 8452592

Claim:
A signal separating apparatus that separates a specific speech signal and a noise signal from a received sound signal, comprising: a transform unit for converting the data for the received sound signal from the time domain to the frequency domain; a signal separating unit that separates at least a first signal and a second signal in the sound signal; a joint probability density distribution estimation unit that selects a frequency bin from undetermined frequency bins; a joint probability density distribution calculation unit that calculates joint probability density distributions of the first signal and the second signal with the selected frequency bin; a classifying determination unit that determines the first signal and the second signal as the specific speech signal or the noise signal based on shapes of the joint probability density distributions calculated by the joint probability density distribution calculation unit, wherein the joint probability density distribution estimation unit, the joint probability density distribution calculation unit, and the classifying determination unit select, calculate, and determine until there are no more undetermined frequency bins.