Speech signals in enclosed environments are often distorted by reverberation and noise. In speech communication\nsystems with several randomly distributed microphones, involving a dynamic speaker and unknown source location,\nit is of great interest to monitor the perceived quality at each microphone and select the signal with the best quality.\nMost of existing approaches for quality estimation require prior information or a clean reference signal, which is\nunfortunately seldom available. In this paper, a practical non-intrusive method for quality assessment of reverberated\nspeech signals is proposed. Using a statistical model of the reverberation process, we examine the energies as\nmeasured by unidirectional elements in a microphone array. By measuring the power ratio, we obtain a measure for\nthe amount of reverberation in the received acoustic signals. This measure is then utilized to derive a blind estimation\nof the direct-to-reverberation energy ratio in the room. The proposed approach attains a simple, reliable, and robust\nquality measure, shown here through persuasive simulation results.
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