公开(公告)号：US11341988B1

公开(公告)日：2022-05-24

申请号：US16578802

申请日：2019-09-23

Applicant: Apple Inc.

Inventor： Ramin Pishehvar ,  Feiping Li ,  Ante Jukic ,  Mehrez Souden ,  Joshua D. Atkins

IPC: G10L15/22 ,  G10L25/84 ,  G10L15/05

Abstract: A hybrid machine learning-based and DSP statistical post-processing technique is disclosed for voice activity detection. The hybrid technique may use a DNN model with a small context window to estimate the probability of speech by frames. The DSP statistical post-processing stage operates on the frame-based speech probabilities from the DNN model to smooth the probabilities and to reduce transitions between speech and non-speech states. The hybrid technique may estimate the soft decision on detected speech in each frame based on the smoothed probabilities, generate a hard decision using a threshold, detect a complete utterance that may include brief pauses, and estimate the end point of the utterance. The hybrid voice activity detection technique may incorporate a target directional probability estimator to estimate the direction of the speech source. The DSP statistical post-processing module may use the direction of the speech source to inform the estimates of the voice activity.