Apparatus and method for controlling an acoustic echo canceler
AssigneeVTEL Corporation
InventorsPeter C. Hsiang, James H. Parry
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Abstract
A method and associated apparatus for controlling an acoustic canceler (“AEC”) are disclosed. Prior to passing audio signals to the AEC, a distortion detector is used to determine if the signals are distorted. If so, the AEC does not adapt is filter coefficients to the distorted signals. This technique improves the AEC's ability to adapt its filter coefficients to subsequent undistorted signals. For example, near-end or far-end audio signals above a predetermined threshold value are detected by a distortion detector which disables adaptive filter control logic so that distorted signals do not result in generation of erroneous filter coefficients.
Claims19
A method for controlling an echo canceler having a plurality of settings comprising:
- determining that a first signal is distorted if the first signal exceeds a distortion threshold;
- and,
- causing said echo canceler not to change said settings when said first signal is distorted.
A digital audio processing system comprising:
- a plurality of memory locations containing data representing an audio signal;
- an acoustic echo canceler having a plurality of settings;
- and
- a distortion detector reading the contents of said plurality of memory locations and detecting distortion in said audio signal, said distortion detector being coupled to said acoustic echo canceler to cause said acoustic echo canceler not to adjust said settings when distortion is detected in said audio signal.
A communication system for communicating audio information between a near-end and a far-end, the communication system comprising:
- a near-end microphone operable to convert near-end sounds into a near-end signal;
- a far-end microphone operable to convert far-end sounds into a far-end signal;
- a near-end speaker in communication with the far-end microphone and operable to convert the far-end signal into a near-end sound;
- a far-end speaker in communication with the near-end microphone and operable to convert the near-end signal into a far-end sound;
- an acoustic echo canceller associated with the near-end, the acoustic echo canceller having adaptive settings and operable to adapt the settings to changing echos;
- and
- a distortion detector in communication with the acoustic echo canceller, the distortion detector operable to detect a distorted signal having a value above a predetermined distortion threshold and to disable the acoustic echo canceller from adapting settings with the distorted signal.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.