Grid-based beamformer design for room-environment microphone arrays

A new method is presented for speech acquisition in a room-environment using a microphone array. The technique involves dividing the room into several regions (called grids), and classifying each grid according to the acoustic source located within it. Based on this classification, array weights are found to pass signals from the chosen source grid while minimizing the response to so-called interference grids (that contain either interfering sources or strong reflections). Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.