PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16003396
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-06
Publication Date: 2018-12
Patent Classification: ["381", "313000"]

Abstract:
A microphone system comprises a multitude of microphones; a signal processor connected to said number of microphones, and being configured to estimate a direction-to and/or a position of the target sound source relative to the microphone system based on a maximum likelihood methodology; and a database Θ comprising a dictionary of relative transfer functions representing direction-dependent acoustic transfer functions from said target signal source to each of said microphones relative to a reference microphone among said microphones, wherein individual dictionary elements of said database Θ of relative transfer functions comprises relative transfer functions for a number of different directions and/or positions relative to the microphone system; and wherein the signal processor is configured to determine one or more of the most likely directions to or locations of said target sound source. The invention may e.g. be used for the hearing aids or other portable audio communication devices.

Claim (Index 21):
A method of operating a microphone system comprising a multitude of M of microphones, where M is larger than or equal to two, adapted for picking up sound from the environment, the method comprising\n providing M electric input signals x m (n), m=1, . . . , M, n representing time, each electric input signal representing the environment sound at a given microphone and comprising a mixture of a target sound signal s m (n) propagated via an acoustic propagation channel from a location of a target sound source, and possible additive noise signals v m (n) as present at the location of the microphone in question; estimating a direction- to and/or a position of the target sound source relative to the microphone system based on\n said electric input signals; \n a maximum likelihood methodology; and \n a database \u0398 comprising a dictionary of relative transfer functions d m (k) representing direction-dependent acoustic transfer functions from each of said M microphones (m=1, . . . , M) to a reference microphone (m=i) among said M microphones, k being a frequency index. The method further comprises \n providing that individual dictionary elements of said database \u0398 of relative transfer functions d m (k) comprises relative transfer functions for a number of different directions (\u03b8) and/or positions (\u03b8, \u03c6, r) relative to the microphone system, where \u03b8, \u03c6, and r are spherical coordinates; and determining a posterior probability or a log(posterior) probability of some of or all of said individual dictionary elements, and determining one or more of the most likely directions to or locations of said target sound source by determining the one or more values among said determined posterior probability or said log(posterior) probability having the largest posterior probability(ies) or log(posterior) probability(ies), respectively.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 32.0
- Percentile: 94.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.06667
- Patent Class: 381.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: True
- Related Applications: ['15915734', '15608294', '15290643', '15042944', '15669020']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.7204727899357489
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5034540730438347
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.6987709182465576
- Mean Citation Score: 279.779102
- Max Citation Score: 303.93536
- Similarity Product: 276.21747145881653

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test