Patent 7372770 was granted and assigned to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories on May, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method and system detect speech activity. An ultrasonic signal is directed at a face of a speaker over time. A Doppler signal of the ultrasonic signal is acquired after reflection by the face. Energy in the Doppler signal is measured over time. The energy over time is compared to a predetermined threshold to detect speech activity of the speaker in a concurrently acquired audio signal.