Real-Time Implementation of Two-Stage Blind Source Separation Combining SIMO-ICA and Binary Masking

A new real-time two-stage blind source separation (BSS) for convolutive mixtures of speech is proposed, in which a Single-Input Multiple-Output (SIMO)-model-based ICA and binary mask processing are combined. SIMO-model-based ICA can separate the mixed signals, not into monaural source signals but into SIMO-model-based signals from independent sources as they are at the microphones. Thus, the separated signals of SIMOmodel-based ICA can maintain the spatial qualities of each sound source. Owing to the attractive property, binary mask processing can be applied to efficiently remove the residual interference components after SIMO-model-based ICA. In addition, the performance deterioration due to the latency problem in ICA can be mitigated by introducing real-time binary mask processing. The experiments using real-time BSS system reveal that the separation performance can be considerably improved by using the proposed method in comparison to the conventional BSS methods.
IWAENC2005: International Workshop on Acoustic Echo and Noise Control , September 12-15, 2005, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.