Patent ID: 8073689

Claim:
A system for suppressing repetitive transient noises from a signal comprising: a repetitive transient noise detector that comprises a processor adapted to detect the presence of transient noise in a received signal comprising a harmonic spectrum and a noise spectrum, where the repetitive transient noise detector is adapted to analyze one or more frequency spectrum sound event characteristics and one or more temporal sound event characteristics of the transient noise to determine whether the transient noise is repetitive transient noise; and a repetitive transient noise attenuator adapted to dampen the transient noise detected in the received signal in response to the repetitive transient noise detector identifying the transient noise as being repetitive transient noise; where the repetitive transient noise detector is adapted to fit a function to a selected portion of the received signal in a time-frequency domain to evaluate spectro-temporal shape characteristics of a sound event in the received signal and to determine whether the transient noise is repetitive transient noise; and where the repetitive transient noise detector is adapted to identify the sound event as a repetitive transient noise event based on the function, a signal envelope of the sound event, and a correlation threshold that depends on a width and sharpness of the repetitive transient noise.