A novel cascade structure for joint backward blind acoustic noise and echo cancellation systems

Abstract

This paper addresses joint acoustic echo and punctual noise cancellations framework in hands-free communication systems. A novel cascade structure that combines the backward blind source separation structure (BBSS) as an acoustic noise canceller (ANC), and a conventional acoustic echo canceller (AEC), intended to solve the problem of acoustic echo, is presented. It is proposed to use two adaptive filtering algorithms to update the filter coefficients of each process (ANC and AEC stages). In the first ANC stage, the BBSS structure is combined with the two-channel simplified fast transversal (SFTF) filter algorithm. In the second AEC stage, a single-channel SFTF algorithm is used. Experimental results show both superiority and efficiency of the new structure in comparison with the AEC based SFTF system (without a joint process) in terms of echo return loss enhancement and mean square error gain criteria.