Unifying background models over complex audio using entropy

In this paper we extend an existing audio background modelling technique, leading to a more robust application to complex audio environments. The determination of background audio is used as an initial stage in the analysis of audio for surveillance and monitoring applications. Knowledge of the background serves to highlight unusual or infrequent sounds. An existing modelling approach uses an online, adaptive Gaussian Mixture model technique that uses multiple distributions to model variations in the background. The method used to determine the background distributions of the GMM leads to a failure mode of the existing technique when applied to complex audio. We propose a method incorporating further information, the proximity of distributions determined using entropy, to determine a more complete background model. The method was successful in more robustly modelling the background for complex audio scenes.