The Binaural LCMV Beamformer and its Performance Analysis

The recently proposed binaural linearly constrained minimum variance (BLCMV) beamformer is an extension of the well-known binaural minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamformer, imposing constraints for both the desired and the interfering sources. Besides its capabilities to reduce int...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE/ACM transactions on audio, speech, and language processing speech, and language processing, 2016-03, Vol.24 (3), p.543-558
Main Authors: Hadad, Elior, Doclo, Simon, Gannot, Sharon
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Auditory system
Beamforming
Binaural cues
Binaural hearing
Cues
Hearing aids
Integrated circuits
Interference
LCMV beamformer
Microphones
Noise
Noise measurement
Noise reduction
Relative transfer function
Transfer functions
Variance
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Summary:The recently proposed binaural linearly constrained minimum variance (BLCMV) beamformer is an extension of the well-known binaural minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamformer, imposing constraints for both the desired and the interfering sources. Besides its capabilities to reduce interference and noise, it also enables to preserve the binaural cues of both the desired and interfering sources, hence making it particularly suitable for binaural hearing aid applications. In this paper, a theoretical analysis of the BLCMV beamformer is presented. In order to gain insights into the performance of the BLCMV beamformer, several decompositions are introduced that reveal its capabilities in terms of interference and noise reduction, while controlling the binaural cues of the desired and the interfering sources. When setting the parameters of the BLCMV beamformer, various considerations need to be taken into account, e.g. based on the amount of interference and noise reduction and the presence of estimation errors of the required relative transfer functions (RTFs). Analytical expressions for the performance of the BLCMV beamformer in terms of noise reduction, interference reduction, and cue preservation are derived. Comprehensive simulation experiments, using measured acoustic transfer functions as well as real recordings on binaural hearing aids, demonstrate the capabilities of the BLCMV beamformer in various noise environments.
ISSN:2329-9290
2329-9304
DOI:10.1109/TASLP.2016.2514496