PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16110393
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-08
Publication Date: 2018-12
Patent Classification: ["381", "092000"]

Abstract:
Focusing sound signals in a shared 3D space uses an array of physical microphones, preferably disposed evenly across a room to provide even sound coverage throughout the room. At least one processor coupled to the physical microphones does not form beams, but instead preferably forms 1000's of virtual microphone bubbles within the room. By determining the processing gains of the sound signals sourced at each of the bubbles, the location(s) of the sound source(s) in the room can be determined. This system provides not only sound improvement by focusing on the sound source(s), but with the advantage that a desired sound source can be focused on more effectively (rather than steered to) while un-focusing undesired sound sources (like reverb and noise) instead of rejecting out of beam signals. This provides a full three dimensional location and a more natural presentation of each sound within the room.

Claim (Index 1):
A method of focusing combined sound signals from a plurality of physical microphones in order to determine a processing gain for each of a plurality of virtual microphone locations in a shared 3D space, comprising:\n defining, by at least one processor, a plurality of virtual microphone bubbles in the shared 3D space, each bubble having location coordinates in the shared 3D space, each bubble corresponding to a virtual microphone; receiving, by the at least one processor, sound signals from the plurality of physical microphones in the shared 3D space; determining, by the at least one processor, a processing gain at each of the plurality of virtual microphone bubble locations, based on a received combination of sound signals sourced from each virtual microphone bubble location in the shared 3D space; identifying, by the at least one processor, a sound source in the shared 3D space, based on the determined processing gains, the sound source having coordinates in the shared 3D space; and focusing, by the at least one processor, combined signals from the plurality of physical microphones to the sound source coordinates by adjusting a weight and a delay for signals received from each of the plurality of physical microphones; and outputting, by the at least one processor, a plurality of streamed signals comprising (i) real-time location coordinates, in the shared 3D space, of the sound source, and (ii) sound source processing gain values associated with each virtual microphone bubble in the shared 3D space.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 1.0
- Percentile: 96.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.79787
- Patent Class: 381.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15597646', '15603986', '15610910', '10414261', '13904870']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.6793776956774746
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5190747293893982
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.663347399048667
- Mean Citation Score: 220.84207
- Max Citation Score: 332.9172700000001
- Similarity Product: 330.0356885576249

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 0
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 0
- Label 101 Adjusted: 0

Dataset: test