Patent ID: 8270633

Claim:
A noise suppressing apparatus comprising: a first unit configured to convert a temporal waveform of a predetermined temporal width into frequency components each composed of an amplitude and a phase; a second unit configured to calculate a band power for each frequency band, based on the amplitude components; a third unit configured to predict a noise power for each frequency band, based on the band powers; a fourth unit configured to calculate a first signal-to-noise ratio for each frequency band and a second signal-to-noise ratio for an entire frequency band, based on the noise powers and the band powers; a fifth unit configured to calculate gains for noise suppression, based on the first signal-to-noise ratios and the second signal-to-noise ratio; a sixth unit configured to weight the amplitude components, based upon the gains; and a seventh unit configured to produce the temporal waveform from the phase components and the weighted amplitude components, wherein the fifth unit comprises: an eighth unit configured to calculate an upper limit value of a noise suppression amount for each frequency band, based on the second signal-to-noise ratio; a ninth unit configured to calculate the noise suppression amount for each frequency band, based on the first signal-to-noise ratios; and a tenth unit configured to limit the noise suppression amount for each frequency band to the corresponding upper limit value, so as to calculate the gains, and configured not to adjust the noise suppression amount when the noise suppression amount is below the corresponding upper limit value; wherein the eighth unit calculates the upper limit values of the noise suppression amounts, based on the second signal-to-noise ratio, so that the higher the frequency band is, the lower the upper limit value of the noise suppression amount is.