Recent Patents in Signal Processing (February 2014) - Audio Signal Processing

For our February 2014 issue, we cover recent patents granted in the area of audio signal processing. The last time we had considered IP in this broad area was in April 2012. Below, we consider several more recent inventions for audio applications as diverse as audio over mobile, digital fingerprinting, spatially enhanced sound, and error concealment in audio coding.

Number: US 8,639,501
Title: Method and arrangement for enhancing spatial audio signals
Inventors: E. Karlsson, S. de Bachtin
Issued: January 28, 2014
Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (Publ) (Stockholm, Sweden)

Number: US 8,639,300
Title: Method and apparatus for maintaining transmit audio in a half duplex system
Inventors: H. Tan, T. Ooi, K. Teh and H. Yow
Issued: January 28, 2014
Assignee: Motorola Solutions, Inc. (Schaumburg, IL)

Number: US 8,630,861
Title: Mixed lossless audio compression
Inventors: W. -G. Chen, C. He
Issued: January 14, 2014
Assignee: Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA)

Number: US 8,630,848
Title: Audio signal transient detection
Inventors: Y. You
Issued: January 14, 2014
Assignee: Digital Rise Technology Co., Ltd. (Guangzhou, China)

Number: US 8,634,946
Title: Apparatus and method for calculating a fingerprint of an audio signal, apparatus and method for synchronizing and apparatus and method for characterizing a test audio signal
Inventors: S. Scharrer, W. Fiesel, M. Neusinger
Issued: January 21, 2014
Assignee: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung E.V. (Munich, Germany)

Number: US 8,620,644
Title: Encoder-assisted frame loss concealment techniques for audio coding
Inventors: S. Ryu, E. Choy and S. Gupta
Issued: December 31, 2013
Assignee: QUALCOMM Incorporated (San Diego, CA)

Number: US 8,619,998
Title: Spatial audio enhancement processing method and apparatus
Inventors: M. Walsh, J. M. Jot, E. Stein
Issued: December 31, 2013
Assignee: Creative Technology Ltd (Singapore)

Number: US 8,618,402
Title: Musical harmony generation from polyphonic audio signals
Inventors: G. Rutledge, W. Campbell, and P. Lupini
Issued: December 31, 2013
Assignee: Harman International Industries Canada Limited (Victoria, B.C., Canada)

Number: US 8,615,391
Title: Method and apparatus to extract important spectral component from audio signal and low bit-rate audio signal coding and/or decoding method and apparatus using the same
Inventors: J. Kim, E. Oh, K.Osipov, and B. Kudryashov
Issued: December 24, 2013
Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Suwon-si, Korea)

Number: US 8,615,095
Title: Automatic volume control for audio signals
Inventors: J. -H. Chen
Issued: December 24, 2013
Assignee: Broadcom Corporation (Irvine, CA)

If you have an interesting patent to share when we next feature patents related to audio signal processing, or if you are especially interested in a signal processing research field that you would want to be highlighted in this section, please send email to Shantanu Rane (rane AT merl DOT com).