Acoustic Echo Cancellation via Beamformer Transfer Function
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Solution Overview
Problem
Modern vehicles equipped with infotainment systems face challenges in echo cancellation when multiple microphones are used, leading to unwanted acoustic echo in hands-free calling systems, which degrades communication quality between vehicle occupants and remote callers.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that utilize a single acoustic echo canceller, operating on the output of a beamformer, which computes updated filter coefficients and adjusts acoustic echo canceller coefficients using a relative transfer function to cancel echo components from speech signals, regardless of the number of microphones in the array, thereby improving communication quality.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If multiple acoustic echo cancellers are used (one per microphone), then echo cancellation performance is improved, but device complexity and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple echo cancellation functions into a single acoustic echo canceller that processes the beamformed output signal. Instead of having separate cancellers for each microphone, the system combines the echo cancellation function with the beamforming output, reducing the number of cancellers from multiple to one while maintaining effective echo cancellation performance.
Solution Approach 2:
The single acoustic echo canceller is designed to handle echo cancellation for multiple microphones universally. The canceller processes the beamformed signal that aggregates information from all microphones, making it a universal solution that works regardless of the number of microphones in the array without requiring separate dedicated cancellers for each.
2Reliability
If multiple acoustic echo cancellers are used (one per microphone), then echo cancellation performance is improved, but computational resources and processing load increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple echo cancellation computations into a single acoustic echo canceller that operates on the beamformed output signal. This consolidation reduces the total computational load by eliminating redundant processing that would occur if separate cancellers were used for each microphone, thereby reducing energy consumption while maintaining cancellation effectiveness.
3Device complexity
If a single acoustic echo canceller is used, then device complexity is reduced, but echo cancellation accuracy may deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The beamformed output signal serves as an intermediary that aggregates and processes information from all microphones before the single acoustic echo canceller processes it. This intermediary approach allows the single canceller to effectively handle echo cancellation for multiple microphones by working with the combined beamformed signal rather than processing each microphone signal separately.
Solution Approach 2:
The single acoustic echo canceller is designed with universal functionality to handle echo cancellation across multiple microphones. By processing the beamformed output signal that contains aggregated information from all microphones, the single canceller achieves multi-microphone echo cancellation capability without requiring multiple dedicated cancellers, thus maintaining accuracy while reducing complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
Technical solutions are described for acoustic echo cancellation. An example method includes computing, by a beamformer, a plurality of updated beamformer filter coefficients, the beamformer filter coefficients computed adaptively to determine a speech signal from a plurality of input audio signals. Further, the method includes computing, by a transfer function estimator, a relative transfer function based on the updated beamformer filter coefficients and a plurality of present acoustic echo canceller coefficients. Further, the method includes adjusting a plurality of acoustic echo canceller coefficients using the relative transfer function, and generating an output speech signal, by the acoustic echo canceller, by cancelling echo components from the speech signal using the adjusted filter coefficients. Further, the method includes sending, by the acoustic echo canceller, the output speech signal to a far end speech device.