Two Channel Audio Zooming System For Smartphone

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel two-microphone audio zooming system for smartphones that enhances sound from the front while reducing background noise, using beamforming and noise suppression techniques, validated through experiments.

Contribution

It presents the first implementation of a two-microphone audio zooming system on smartphones utilizing beamforming and noise suppression, demonstrating practical effectiveness.

Findings

Effective front sound enhancement confirmed by experiments

Significant noise and interference reduction achieved

Positive subjective user experience validated

Abstract

In this paper, two microphone based systems for audio zooming is proposed for the first time. The audio zooming application allows sound capture and enhancement from the front direction while attenuating interfering sources from all other directions. The complete audio zooming system utilizes beamforming based target extraction. In particular, Minimum Power Distortionless Response (MPDR) beamformer and Griffith Jim Beamformer (GJBF) are explored. This is followed by block thresholding for residual noise and interference suppression, and zooming effect creation. A number of simulation and real life experiments using Samsung smartphone (Samsung Galaxy A5) were conducted. Objective and subjective measures confirm the rich user experience.