Improved Proportionate Subband NLMS for Acoustic Echo Cancellation in Changing Environments

• Published in: IEEE signal processing letters Vol. 15; pp. 337 - 340
• Main Authors: Laska, B.N.M., Goubran, R.A., Bolic, M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 2008; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Acoustic measurements; Adaptive filters; Adaptive systems and adaptive filtering; Convergence; Echo cancellers; Frequency measurement; Frequency response; Loudspeakers; Microphones; Time measurement; time-frequency analysis and signal representations; Wideband
• ISSN: 1070-9908; 1558-2361
• DOI: 10.1109/LSP.2008.919812

Acoustic echo paths can change frequently in response to minor changes in the near-end room. Using echo path measurements obtained using commercial wideband hands-free terminals, it is demonstrated that the effects of these changes are not uniform across time and frequency. A subband echo canceler combined with a proportionate step-size adaptation algorithm is proposed to exploit time and frequency response characteristics of echo path changes to achieve faster tracking and higher echo attenuation. Improvements of 5-10 dB compared to fullband structures are observed for real changing echo environments with wideband speech inputs.