NCT of Cambridge, England has developed software technology said to allow Bluetooth headsets and mobile phones to be used in extremely noisy environments, such as construction sites and auto racetracks. ClearSpeech Xtreme uses two microphones — one to pick up the speech, the other to pick up ambient noise, according to the company.

ClearSpeech Xtreme uses a DSP (digital signal processor) to remove the ambient noise from the voice signal, enabling clear speech to be heard at the receiving end; it currently runs on DSPs from Analog Devices and TI. The technology is also offered in fixed and floating point ANSI C code format, for porting to general purpose CPUs such as the ARM architecture.

NCT says its ClearSpeech noise reduction, echo cancellation, and signal conditioning software is already widely used in 3G phones and hands-free car kits. The technology can be integrated into audio chips or software applications, to provide voice clarity both for human listeners and speech recognition systems, according to the company.

NCT Managing Director Dr. Gillian Davis stated, “This two microphone solution is an exciting development. It is probably one of the most remarkable products we've developed and commercially it should be attractive to mobile phone developers targeting the youth market as well as industrial applications where there is considerable noise. We see ClearSpeech Xtreme being an option that the user can select when required.”

The company's ClearSpeech technologies appear to support Linux, Windows XP/XPe, Windows CE, Windows CE for Automotive, and QNX, among other OSes.

 
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