Acoustic echo cancellation in an integrated audio and telecommunication system

A multi-channel telecommunications system comprising:

• a plurality of zones;
• one or more speaking locations in each zone;
• a plurality of microphones, each sensing speech at a respective speaking location and outputting a voice signal;
• an audio source that provides a plurality of audio signals;
• a plurality of acoustic echo cancellers, each outputting an echo cancellation signal and being capable of inputting a combined voice and audio signal from the audio source and a respective microphone;
• a plurality of speakers, each inputting one of the combined voice and audio signals and introducing sound into a respective zone at a respective speaking location;
• a plurality of echo cancellation summers, each corresponding to a respective microphone, each echo cancellation summer inputting the respective voice signal from the respective microphone and an echo cancellation signal from each adaptive echo canceller associated with the zone in which the microphone is located, and outputting an echo-cancelled voice signal;
• and
• a multiplier associated with each acoustic echo canceller, each multiplier receiving an echo-cancelled voice signal and a regressor signal, and outputting an update signal to the respective acoustic echo canceller;
• wherein the acoustic echo canceller inputs a combined voice and audio signal and the regressor signal does not include the audio signal.

In a multi-channel telecommunications system having one or more speaking locations in a plurality of zones, a plurality of microphones, each sensing speech at a respective speaking location, and a plurality of loudspeakers, each introducing sound into a respective zone at a respective speaking location, a method of acoustic echo cancellation comprising the steps of:

• outputting a voice signal from each respective microphone in response to speech in the respective speaking location;
• combining each respective voice signal with one or more audio signals;
• transmitting each combined voice and audio signal to at least one speaker located in other zones;
• adaptively modeling the acoustic path between each speaker and each microphone located in each respective zone;
• cancelling the echo in a voice signal from each respective microphone by filtering the combined voice and audio signals transmitted to the speaker in the same speaking location through the respective adaptive model for the acoustic path and subtracting the filtered signal from the respective voice signal;
• and
• updating each adaptive model by multiplying the respective echo-cancelled voice signal by a regressor signal wherein the regressor signal is sheltered to not include any audio signal components.