US Patent 11240597 Ceiling tile beamforming microphone array system

This disclosure describes a ceiling tile beamforming microphone array system that includes a plurality of microphones coupled together as a microphone array and used for beamforming processing, the plurality of microphones are positioned at predetermined locations that produce audio signals to be used to form a directional pickup pattern; one or more separate processing devices where one of the separate processing devices further includes beamforming processing; a single ceiling tile with an outer surface on the front side of the ceiling tile where the outer surface is acoustically transparent; where the ceiling tile beamforming microphone array system is used in a drop ceiling mounting configuration, where the microphone array couples to the back side of the ceiling tile and all or part of the ceiling tile beamforming microphone array system is in the drop space of the drop ceiling.