Drone audition: audio signal enhancement from drone embedded microphones using multichannel Wiener filtering and Gaussian-mixture based post-filtering
Drone audition: audio signal enhancement from drone embedded microphones using multichannel Wiener filtering and Gaussian-mixture based post-filtering
In this paper, we consider the problem of recovering desired sound source signals from on-board microphone recordings on a noisy drone. Enhancement of source signal degraded by drone noise is considered to be a difficult task due to the strong noise generated from its motors and propellers causing an extremely low signal-to-drone noise ratio (SD‾NR). We propose a solution (i) by combining the widely known multichannel Wiener filter (MWF) to remove drone noise from microphone recordings, and (ii) further reduction of residual noise using a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) based dual-stage parametric Wiener filter (WF). The method exploits known statistics of motor current-specific drone noise. This combination of techniques to the specific context of signal enhancement for drone audition is applicable to irregular microphone arrays embedded on a drone enabling realistic integration to most drones. We demonstrate the validity of the proposed framework with extensive real data through (i) experimental recordings from two different drone acoustics datasets and (ii) outdoor measurements from a hovering drone for a bioacoustic application. The results confirm improved performance in terms of SD‾NR, speech quality (PESQ), and intelligibility (STOI) at very low SD‾NR (up to −30 dB) and show a strong potential for signal enhancement applications using noisy drones.
Drone noise reduction, Embedded microphones, Gaussian mixture model, Signal enhancement, Wiener filter
Manamperi, Wageesha N.
538595d0-fe40-4520-848d-e6b5941c415e
Abhayapala, Thushara D.
5de91ea7-d2b9-41d3-b309-e1023ab5bdeb
Samarasinghe, Prasanga N.
89a933b3-56af-4c93-9679-90d150979632
Zhang, Jihui (Aimee)
6c5536d1-5066-437b-987c-c2307021709d
22 December 2023
Manamperi, Wageesha N.
538595d0-fe40-4520-848d-e6b5941c415e
Abhayapala, Thushara D.
5de91ea7-d2b9-41d3-b309-e1023ab5bdeb
Samarasinghe, Prasanga N.
89a933b3-56af-4c93-9679-90d150979632
Zhang, Jihui (Aimee)
6c5536d1-5066-437b-987c-c2307021709d
Manamperi, Wageesha N., Abhayapala, Thushara D., Samarasinghe, Prasanga N. and Zhang, Jihui (Aimee)
(2023)
Drone audition: audio signal enhancement from drone embedded microphones using multichannel Wiener filtering and Gaussian-mixture based post-filtering.
Applied Acoustics, 216, [109818].
(doi:10.1016/j.apacoust.2023.109818).
Abstract
In this paper, we consider the problem of recovering desired sound source signals from on-board microphone recordings on a noisy drone. Enhancement of source signal degraded by drone noise is considered to be a difficult task due to the strong noise generated from its motors and propellers causing an extremely low signal-to-drone noise ratio (SD‾NR). We propose a solution (i) by combining the widely known multichannel Wiener filter (MWF) to remove drone noise from microphone recordings, and (ii) further reduction of residual noise using a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) based dual-stage parametric Wiener filter (WF). The method exploits known statistics of motor current-specific drone noise. This combination of techniques to the specific context of signal enhancement for drone audition is applicable to irregular microphone arrays embedded on a drone enabling realistic integration to most drones. We demonstrate the validity of the proposed framework with extensive real data through (i) experimental recordings from two different drone acoustics datasets and (ii) outdoor measurements from a hovering drone for a bioacoustic application. The results confirm improved performance in terms of SD‾NR, speech quality (PESQ), and intelligibility (STOI) at very low SD‾NR (up to −30 dB) and show a strong potential for signal enhancement applications using noisy drones.
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More information
Accepted/In Press date: 14 December 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 22 December 2023
Published date: 22 December 2023
Keywords:
Drone noise reduction, Embedded microphones, Gaussian mixture model, Signal enhancement, Wiener filter
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 492895
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/492895
ISSN: 0003-682X
PURE UUID: 2c9aa77e-5693-4642-9aec-5dc4c8e327a9
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Date deposited: 19 Aug 2024 16:49
Last modified: 20 Aug 2024 02:05
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Contributors
Author:
Wageesha N. Manamperi
Author:
Thushara D. Abhayapala
Author:
Prasanga N. Samarasinghe
Author:
Jihui (Aimee) Zhang
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