A multichannel diffuse power estimator for dereverberation in the presence of multiple sources

Using a recently proposed informed spatial filter, it is possible to effectively and robustly reduce reverberation from speech signals captured in noisy environments using multiple microphones. Late reverberation can be modeled by a diffuse sound field with a time-varying power spectral density (PSD). To attain reverberation reduction using this spatial filter, an accurate estimate of the diffuse sound PSD is required. In this work, a method is proposed to estimate the diffuse sound PSD from a set of reference signals by blocking the direct signal components. By considering multiple plane waves in the signal model to describe the direct sound, the method is suitable in the presence of multiple simultaneously active speakers. The proposed diffuse sound PSD estimator is analyzed and compared to existing estimators. In addition, the performance of the spatial filter computed with the diffuse sound PSD estimate is analyzed using simulated and measured room impulse responses in noisy environments with stationary noise and non-stationary babble noise.