Method of accelerating the training of an acoustic echo canceller in a full-duplex beamforming-based audio conferencing system
AssigneeMitel Network Corporation
InventorsFranck Beaucoup, Michael Tetelbaum
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method and apparatus is set forth for accelerating the total acoustic echo cancellation convergence time in a microphone array full-duplex conferencing system with beamformer. The invention is based on sequentially switching the beamformer to untrained sectors during periods of far-end speech activity and performing real-time cancellation of far-end echo signals from the near-end signals to consecutively adapt and store filter coefficients for the echo canceller corresponding to each sector.
Claims9
In a beamformer-based audio conferencing system, the improvement comprising accelerated training of an acoustic echo canceller operating on near-end signals output from said beamformer by sequentially switching said beamformer to untrained sectors during periods of far-end speech activity and performing real-time cancellation of far-end echo signals from said near-end signals to consecutively adapt and store filter coefficients for said echo canceller corresponding to each of said sectors.
A conferencing system comprising:
- a loudspeaker for reproducing far-end signals;
- a plurality of microphones for receiving near-end signals;
- a beamformer for outputting said near-end signals from respective sectors;
- an acoustic echo canceller for performing real-time cancellation of far-end echo signals from said near-end signals output from said beamformer;
- a training module for controlling said beamformer during periods of far-end speech activity to sequentially select sectors for which said acoustic echo canceller is not converged;
- and
- a localization module for controlling said beamformer during periods other than said periods of far-end speech activity.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.