Patent ID: 8923529

Claim:
A microphone array system for sound acquisition from multiple sound sources in a reception space, the microphone array system including: a microphone array interface for receiving microphone output signals from an array of microphone transducers that are spatially arranged relative to each other within the reception space, the array interface including a sample-and-hold arrangement for sampling the microphone output signals of the transducers in processing cycles to form discrete time domain microphone output signals into corresponding discrete frequency domain microphone output signals; a beamformer module operatively able to form beamformer signals associated with any one of a plurality of defined spatial reception sectors within the reception space surrounding the array of microphone transducers, the beamformer module including a set of defined beamformer weights and being configured to compute, during each processing cycle, a set of a beamformer output signals that are associated with respective reception sectors and have a defined set of frequency bins; and a post-filter module that is configured to define a pre-filter mask for each primary beamformer output signal, the post-filter module being configured to populate a frequency bin of the pre-filter mask for each primary beamformer signal with a defined value if the value of the corresponding frequency bin of the primary beamformer signal is the highest amongst same frequency bins of all the beamformer output signals, otherwise to populate the frequency bin of the pre-filter mask with another defined value.