Acoustic Echo Control

Abstract Modern systems for acoustic man-machine communication, such as teleconferencing equipment or speech dialog systems, will have to provide hands-free voice interfaces with full-duplex ability in order to allow for most natural interaction with users. Acoustic echo control is the enabling technology for suppressing the unavoidable feedback between acoustic reproduction and recording, i.e., the echo, such that an enhanced microphone signal is transmitted to a remote talker or supplied to a speech terminal. In this chapter, we first recall the established signal processing strategies for acoustic echo cancellation, mostly based on the family of deterministic least-squares adaptive filters. We then proceed with our main theme, which consists of the recent developments towards a more statistical framework for acoustic echo control. Our approach is guided by the motivation of taking various uncertainties regarding the echo generation process into account, while maintaining backwards compatibility for the inclusion of established technology. With unified notation, we present different optimum filtering solutions which were tailored for robustness against the specific uncertainties related to echo path variability, nonlinearity, and clock drift in a system. Furthermore, we provide a generalization of our concepts to systems with multiple reproduction channels, where algorithmic complexity and correlation of loudspeaker signals represents additional challenges.

[1]  Christophe Beaugeant,et al.  Combined noise and echo reduction in hands-free systems: a survey , 2001, IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Process..

[2]  Christof Faller,et al.  Suppressing acoustic echo in a sampled auditory envelope space , 2005 .

[3]  Donald L. Duttweiler,et al.  A Twelve-Channel Digital Echo Canceler , 1978, IEEE Trans. Commun..

[4]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  A novel multidelay adaptive algorithm for Volterra filters in diagonal coordinate representation [nonlinear acoustic echo cancellation example] , 2004, 2004 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[5]  Rafik Goubran,et al.  Limitations of handsfree acoustic echo cancellers due to nonlinear loudspeaker distortion and enclosure vibration effects , 1995, Proceedings of 1995 Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Accoustics.

[6]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  Wave-domain adaptive filtering for acoustic human-machine interfaces based onwavefield analysis and synthesis , 2004, 2004 12th European Signal Processing Conference.

[7]  Jacob Benesty,et al.  A new class of doubletalk detectors based on cross-correlation , 2000, IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Process..

[8]  Steven L. Gay,et al.  The fast affine projection algorithm , 1995, 1995 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[9]  John G. Proakis,et al.  Digital Signal Processing: Principles, Algorithms, and Applications , 1992 .

[10]  Christof Faller,et al.  Perceptually motivated low complexity acoustic echo control , 2003 .

[11]  Dennis R. Morgan,et al.  Echo Cancellation for Speech Signals , 1999 .

[12]  R. Tibshirani.  Regression Shrinkage and Selection via the Lasso , 1996 .

[13]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  Nonlinear acoustic echo cancellation using adaptive orthogonalized power filters , 2005, Proceedings. (ICASSP '05). IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2005..

[14]  Peter Vary,et al.  Frequency-domain adaptive Kalman filter for acoustic echo control in hands-free telephones , 2006, Signal Process..

[15]  Henning Puder,et al.  Step-size control for acoustic echo cancellation filters - an overview , 2000, Signal Process..

[16]  George S. Moschytz,et al.  Noise reduction by noise-adaptive spectral magnitude expansion , 1994 .

[17]  E. Hänsler,et al.  Acoustic Echo and Noise Control: A Practical Approach , 2004 .

[18]  Ted S. Wada,et al.  On Dealing with Sampling Rate Mismatches in Blind Source Separation and Acoustic Echo Cancellation , 2007, 2007 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics.

[19]  Frank Kettler,et al.  Speech Quality – A Multidimensional Problem : An Approach to Combine Different Quality Parameters , 2009 .

[20]  S. Spors,et al.  A general derivation of Wave-Domain Adaptive Filtering and application to acoustic echo cancellation , 2008, 2008 42nd Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers.

[21]  Jacob Benesty,et al.  A real-time stereophonic acoustic subband echo canceler , 2000 .

[22]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  Adaptation of a memoryless preprocessor for nonlinear acoustic echo cancelling , 2000, Signal Process..

[23]  Gerald Enzner,et al.  Bayesian inference model for applications of time-varying acoustic system identification , 2010, 2010 18th European Signal Processing Conference.

[24]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  Orthogonalized power filters for nonlinear acoustic echo cancellation , 2006, Signal Process..

[25]  Don H. Johnson,et al.  Statistical Signal Processing , 2009, Encyclopedia of Biometrics.

[26]  Edward J. Wegman,et al.  Statistical Signal Processing , 1985 .

[27]  Anja Walter,et al.  Audio Signal Processing For Next Generation Multimedia Communication Systems , 2016 .

[28]  B. Ripley,et al.  Robust Statistics , 2018, Encyclopedia of Mathematical Geosciences.

[29]  Bernhard H. Nitsch.  A frequency-selective stepfactor control for an adaptive filter algorithm working in the frequency domain , 2000, Signal Process..

[30]  Brian R Glasberg,et al.  Derivation of auditory filter shapes from notched-noise data , 1990, Hearing Research.

[31]  Régine Le Bouquin-Jeannès,et al.  Nonlinear acoustic echo cancellation based on Volterra filters , 2003, IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Process..

[32]  Gerald Enzner,et al.  Fourier expansion of hammerstein models for nonlinear acoustic system identification , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP).

[33]  J. Shynk.  Frequency-domain and multirate adaptive filtering , 1992, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

[34]  H. Kotera,et al.  Application of Fast Kalman Estimation to Adaptive Equalization , 1978 .

[35]  J. L. Hall,et al.  Stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation-an overview of the fundamental problem , 1995, IEEE Signal Processing Letters.

[36]  Peter Vary,et al.  Digital Speech Transmission: Enhancement, Coding and Error Concealment , 2006 .

[37]  Kun Shi,et al.  Nonlinear acoustic echo cancellation , 2008 .

[38]  Jonathon A. Chambers,et al.  LOW COMPLEXITY -NLMS ALGORITHMS AND SUBBAND STRUCTURES FOR STEREOPHONIC ACOUSTIC ECHO CANCELLATION , 1999 .

[39]  G. G. Stokes.  "J." , 1890, The New Yale Book of Quotations.

[40]  R. Gray,et al.  Distortion measures for speech processing , 1980 .

[41]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  TRINICON-based Blind System Identification with Application to Multiple-Source Localization and Separation , 2007, Blind Speech Separation.

[42]  T. Başar,et al.  A New Approach to Linear Filtering and Prediction Problems , 2001 .

[43]  Christof Faller,et al.  ACOUSTIC ECHO SUPPRESSION BASED ON SEPARATION OF STATIONARY AND NON-STATIONARY ECHO COMPONENTS , 2008 .

[44]  Murtaza Ali,et al.  Stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation system using time-varying all-pass filtering for signal decorrelation , 1998, Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, ICASSP '98 (Cat. No.98CH36181).

[45]  Sascha Spors,et al.  Source-domain adaptive filtering for MIMO systems with application to acoustic echo cancellation , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing.

[46]  J. Blauert.  Spatial Hearing: The Psychophysics of Human Sound Localization , 1983 .

[47]  Rainer Martin,et al.  Partitioned residual echo power estimation for frequency-domain acoustic echo cancellation and postfiltering , 2002, Eur. Trans. Telecommun..

[48]  Phillip A. Regalia,et al.  Acoustic echo cancellation: do IIR models offer better modeling capabilities than their FIR counterparts? , 1998, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[49]  Seishi Kitayama,et al.  An Adaptive Echo Canceller with Linear Predictor , 1979 .

[50]  Sascha Spors,et al.  Spatio-temporal signal preprocessing for multichannel acoustic echo cancellation , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP).

[51]  Peter Vary,et al.  Energy Efficiency of Network-Based Acoustic Echo Control in Mobile Radio , 2012, ITG Conference on Speech Communication.

[52]  Rainer Martin,et al.  Combined acoustic echo control and noise reduction for hands-free telephony , 1998, Signal Process..

[53]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  Analysis and design of multirate systems for cancellation of acoustical echoes , 1988, ICASSP-88., International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[54]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  Adaptive Volterra Filters With Evolutionary Quadratic Kernels Using a Combination Scheme for Memory Control , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

[55]  Tomas Gänsler,et al.  Influence of audio coding on stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation , 1998, Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, ICASSP '98 (Cat. No.98CH36181).

[56]  Wolfgang Klippel,et al.  Dynamic Measurement and Interpretation of the Nonlinear Parameters of Electrodynamic Loudspeakers , 1990 .

[57]  D. Hertz,et al.  Time delay estimation by generalized cross correlation methods , 1984 .

[58]  Douglas L. Jones,et al.  NONLINEAR ECHO CANCELLATION FOR HANDS-FREE SPEAKERPHONES , 1998 .

[59]  Robert H. Halstead,et al.  Matrix Computations , 2011, Encyclopedia of Parallel Computing.

[60]  Eberhard Hänsler,et al.  Hands-free telephones - joint control of echo cancellation and postfiltering , 2000, Signal Process..

[61]  Gerald Enzner,et al.  Online maximum-likelihood learning of time-varying dynamical models in block-frequency-domain , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing.

[62]  Jacob Benesty,et al.  A Low Delay and Fast Converging Improved Proportionate Algorithm for Sparse System Identification , 2007, EURASIP J. Audio Speech Music. Process..

[63]  Peter Vary,et al.  ROBUST AND ELEGANT, PURELY STATISTICAL ADAPTATION OF ACOUSTIC ECHO CANCELER AND POSTFILTER , 2003 .

[64]  Jacob Benesty,et al.  A better understanding and an improved solution to the specific problems of stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation , 1998, IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Process..

[65]  Seungjin Choi,et al.  Independent Component Analysis , 2009, Handbook of Natural Computing.

[66]  Christiane Antweiler,et al.  Orthogonalisierende Algorithmen für die digitale Kompensation akustischer Echos , 1995 .

[67]  Donald L. Duttweiler,et al.  Proportionate normalized least-mean-squares adaptation in echo cancelers , 2000, IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Process..

[68]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  Fast and Robust Adaptation of DFT-Domain Volterra Filters in Diagonal Coordinates Using Iterated Coefficient Updates , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

[69]  T. Kailath,et al.  Fast, recursive-least-squares transversal filters for adaptive filtering , 1984 .

[70]  Mariane R. Petraglia,et al.  A new delayless subband adaptive filter structure , 1999, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[71]  Frank Kettler,et al.  Advanced speech quality testing of modern telecommunication equipment: An overview , 2006, Signal Process..

[72]  Seiichi Yamamoto,et al.  An adaptive echo canceller with variable step gain method , 1982 .

[73]  Karin Ackermann,et al.  Advances In Network And Acoustic Echo Cancellation , 2016 .

[74]  Gerald Enzner,et al.  Variational Bayesian inference for nonlinear acoustic echo cancellation using adaptive cascade modeling , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP).

[75]  Shoji Makino,et al.  Stereo projection echo canceller with true echo path estimation , 1995, 1995 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[76]  Dennis R. Morgan,et al.  On a class of computationally efficient, rapidly converging, generalized NLMS algorithms , 1996, IEEE Signal Processing Letters.

[77]  Sascha Spors,et al.  Active listening room compensation for massive multichannel sound reproduction systems using wave-domain adaptive filtering. , 2007, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[78]  Christof Faller,et al.  Suppressing acoustic echo in a spectral envelope space , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing.

[79]  Aarnout Brombacher,et al.  Probability... , 2009, Qual. Reliab. Eng. Int..

[80]  Schuyler Quackenbush,et al.  Objective measures of speech quality , 1995 .

[81]  Eberhard Hänsler,et al.  The hands-free telephone problem- An annotated bibliography , 1992, Signal Process..

[82]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  Blind Source Separation for Convolutive Mixtures: A Unified Treatment , 2004 .

[83]  J.-S. Soo,et al.  Multidelay block frequency domain adaptive filter , 1990, IEEE Trans. Acoust. Speech Signal Process..

[84]  S. Haykin,et al.  Adaptive Filter Theory , 1986 .

[85]  Gerhard Schmidt,et al.  Acoustic echo control. An application of very-high-order adaptive filters , 1999, IEEE Signal Process. Mag..

[86]  Pcw Piet Sommen,et al.  Adaptive filtering methods : on methods use a priori information in order to reduce complexity while maintaining convergence properties , 1992 .

[87]  M.M. Sondhi,et al.  Silencing echoes on the telephone network , 1980, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[88]  Henrique S. Malvar.  A modulated complex lapped transform and its applications to audio processing , 1999, 1999 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. Proceedings. ICASSP99 (Cat. No.99CH36258).

[89]  Gerhard Schmidt,et al.  Control of LMS-type adaptive filters , 2005 .

[90]  Rainer Martin,et al.  Coupled adaptive filters for acoustic echo control and noise reduction , 1995, 1995 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[91]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  RELATION BETWEEN BLIND SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION AND CONVOLUTIVE BLIND SOURCE SEPARATION , 2005 .

[92]  Eric Moulines,et al.  The generalized multidelay adaptive filter: structure and convergence analysis , 1995, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[93]  Peter Vary,et al.  New insights into the statistical signal model and the performance bounds of acoustic echo control , 2005, 2005 13th European Signal Processing Conference.

[94]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  Improved Kalman gain computation for multichannel frequency-domain adaptive filtering and application to acoustic echo cancellation , 2002, 2002 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[95]  Herbert Buchner,et al.  Acoustic Echo Cancellation for Multiple Reproduction Channels: From First Principles to Real-Time Solutions , 2011 .

[96]  Christina Breining.  Acoustic echo control , 1999 .

[97]  Eberhard HÄnsler,et al.  The hands-free telephone problem: an annotated bibliography update , 1994 .

[98]  Sebastian Möller,et al.  Extending the E-Model for Capturing Noise Reduction and Echo Canceller Impairments , 2012 .

[99]  Akihiko Sugiyama,et al.  An Acoustic ECHO Suppressor Based on a Frequency-Domain Model of Highly Nonlinear Residual ECHO , 2006, 2006 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing Proceedings.

[100]  Amir Said,et al.  A Parametric Objective Quality Assessment Tool for Speech Signals Degraded by Acoustic Echo , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing.

[101]  Dennis R. Morgan,et al.  A delayless subband adaptive filter architecture , 1995, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[102]  Christof Faller,et al.  Binaural cue coding-Part II: Schemes and applications , 2003, IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Process..

[103]  Yann Joncour,et al.  A stereo echo canceler with correct echo-path identification based on an input-sliding technique , 1997, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[104]  W. Kellermann,et al.  A Fundamental Relation Between Blind and Supervised Adaptive Filtering Illustrated for Blind Source Separation and Acoustic Echo Cancellation , 2008, 2008 Hands-Free Speech Communication and Microphone Arrays.

[105]  Rainer Martin,et al.  Unbiased residual echo power estimation for hands-free telephony , 2002, 2002 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[106]  Jacob Benesty,et al.  Robust extended multidelay filter and double-talk detector for acoustic echo cancellation , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing.

[107]  Jacob Benesty,et al.  Stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation and two‐channel adaptive filtering: an overview , 2000 .

[108]  Hans Schurer,et al.  Linearization of Electroacoustic Transducers , 1997 .

[109]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  Acoustic Echo Cancellation for Surround Sound using Perceptually Motivated Convergence Enhancement , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - ICASSP '07.

[110]  Jacob Benesty,et al.  Investigation of several types of nonlinearities for use in stereo acoustic echo cancellation , 2001, IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Process..

[111]  T. Kailath,et al.  Numerically stable fast transversal filters for recursive least squares adaptive filtering , 1991, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[112]  J. Mixter.  Fast , 2012 .

[113]  Gerhard Schmidt,et al.  Pseudo-optimal regularization for affine projection algorithms , 2002, 2002 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[114]  Kazuhiko Ozeki,et al.  An adaptive filtering algorithm using an orthogonal projection to an affine subspace and its properties , 1984 .

[115]  Rainer Martin,et al.  The echo shaping approach to acoustic echo control , 1996, Speech Commun..

[116]  Christof Faller,et al.  ACOUSTIC ECHO CONTROL BASED ON TEMPORAL FLUCTUATIONS OF SHORT-TIME SPECTRA , 2008 .

[117]  A. Berkhout,et al.  Acoustic control by wave field synthesis , 1993 .

[118]  Jacob Benesty,et al.  Generalized multichannel frequency-domain adaptive filtering: efficient realization and application to hands-free speech communication , 2005, Signal Process..

[119]  METHODS FOR SUBJECTIVE DETERMINATION OF TRANSMISSION QUALITY Summary , 2022 .

[120]  John G. Proakis,et al.  Probability, random variables and stochastic processes , 1985, IEEE Trans. Acoust. Speech Signal Process..

[121]  S. Boll,et al.  Suppression of acoustic noise in speech using spectral subtraction , 1979 .

[122]  Daniel Lippuner,et al.  Model based step size control for adaptive filters , 2002 .

[123]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  TRINICON: a versatile framework for multichannel blind signal processing , 2004, 2004 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.

[124]  Takashi Araseki,et al.  Echo Canceler with Two Echo Path Models , 1977, IEEE Trans. Commun..

[125]  Walter Kellermann,et al.  BLIND SOURCE SEPARATION FOR CONVOLUTIVE MIXTURES EXPLOITI NG NONGAUSSIANITY, NONWHITENESS, AND NONSTATIONARITY , 2003 .

[126]  Peter Vary,et al.  A soft-partitioned frequency-domain adaptive filter for acoustic echo cancellation , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 2003. Proceedings. (ICASSP '03)..

[127]  M. M. Sondhi,et al.  An adaptive echo canceller , 1967 .

[128]  Gerald Enzner,et al.  State-Space Frequency-Domain Adaptive Filtering for Nonlinear Acoustic Echo Cancellation , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing.

[129]  Christof Faller,et al.  Estimating the Delay and Coloration Effect of the Acoustic Echo Path for Low Complexity Echo Suppression , 2005 .