Design and implementation of a MEMS microphone array system for real-time speech acquisition

Despite many attractive features and the potential for capturing sound in challenging acoustic environments, arrays with a large number of microphones have for a long time been discarded as a practical solution for speech acquisition. This is, among other reasons, due to the high production and computational costs. Only a few realizations of large microphone array systems have been documented, mainly for research and instrumentation use. The advent of MEMS microphones and computationally powerful off-the-shelf hardware has created new possibilities for microphone array development. We investigate a real life application, specifically the case of live sports broadcast, and the requirements that a such application imposes on a microphone array system. We present a system architecture of the first large (300 element circular array with a diameter of 2 m) MEMS microphone array system. In the proposed system, the latest technological advances are utilized to create a user-friendly array control interface. The array’s performance is examined in an anechoic chamber and on a crowded basketball field, and finally compared with existing solutions. The results illustrate the potential of a large MEMS microphone array as part of the technological development in sound acquisition for entertainment and security applications.