Estimation of speech presence probability in the field of microphone array

The subject of this work is the robust estimation of speech presence probability of every spectral component of a speech signal impinging on a linear microphone array. The approach is based on the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) applied to the multichannel framework and far-field, wideband sources. It is shown that under certain distributional assumptions the GLRT provides a framework for speech presence detection by exploiting both the spatial localization and spectral content of the speech signal. The efficiency of the approach and its superiority over a state-of-the-art one-channel speech presence estimation technique is illustrated when additive white Gaussian noise is present in the acoustical field in low signal-to-noise ratio.