Vehicle Audio Echo Cancellation via Mono Frequency Segmentation
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing audio signal processing in vehicles faces challenges with echo compensation, particularly in multichannel audio environments, leading to recognition errors and increased distraction due to interference from vehicle sound systems, which current methods struggle to address effectively without increasing computational complexity or costs.
Innovation Solution
A method that generates a mono audio signal from a multichannel audio source, limited to a specific frequency range, is output by multiple speakers, allowing for simplified echo compensation that focuses on a single-channel signal, reducing computational requirements and avoiding the need for additional microphones or complex processing units.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If echo compensation is applied to multichannel audio signals, then speech recognition accuracy is improved, but computational complexity increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The multichannel audio signal is segmented into individual channel components, and echo compensation is applied separately to each channel rather than processing the entire multichannel signal as a whole. This reduces the computational complexity of echo compensation while maintaining speech recognition accuracy by treating each channel independently.
Solution Approach 2:
The speech signal is extracted from the multichannel audio signal by identifying and isolating the frequency range characteristic of human speech. This extraction process separates the relevant speech information from the surrounding audio content, enabling focused echo compensation on the speech portion only, thereby reducing overall computational requirements.
2Measurement precision
If audio playback is muted during speech dialog, then speech recognition accuracy is improved, but user experience deteriorates due to loss of audio information
Solution Approach 1:
The audio playback signal, which initially causes harmful echo interference, is converted into a beneficial reference signal for echo compensation. By using the audio playback signal as input to the echo compensation algorithm, the system can actively remove the echo from the microphone signal while allowing the audio playback to continue, thus maintaining both speech recognition accuracy and audio information delivery.
Solution Approach 2:
An echo compensation algorithm acts as an intermediary processing stage between the audio playback system and the speech recognition system. This intermediary component processes the microphone signal to remove echo contributions from the audio playback, allowing both audio playback and speech recognition to operate simultaneously without mutual interference.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If audio playback volume is reduced during speech dialog, then echo interference is reduced, but speech recognition still requires additional cleanup processing
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements a feedback mechanism where the audio playback signal is fed back into the echo compensation algorithm as a reference input. This feedback loop enables the algorithm to continuously adapt and accurately model the echo path, allowing for effective echo removal at normal audio playback volumes without requiring additional signal cleanup processing.
Data Source
AI summary
The present invention relates to a method for audio signal processing in a vehicle. In order to allow simple and reliable echo cancellation for voice recognition during simultaneous reproduction of a multichannel audio source signal in a vehicle, a mono audio signal is generated on the basis of a multichannel audio source signal. The mono audio signal is limited to a frequency range between a prescribed lower frequency and a prescribed upper frequency, for example to a range from 100 Hz to 8 kHz. The limited mono audio signal is output via multiple loudspeakers in the vehicle. An influence of the limited mono audio signal that is output via the multiple loudspeakers on a voice audio signal received in the vehicle via a microphone is compensated for by means of the limited mono audio signal in an echo canceller.