New insights into the stereophonic acoustic echo cancellation problem and an adaptive nonlinearity solution

In this paper, we expand the knowledge regarding the problems of two-channel (or stereophonic) echo cancellation. The major difference between two-channel and the single-channel echo cancellation is the problem of nonunique solutions in the two-channel case. In previous work, this nonuniqueness problem has been linked to the coherence between the two incoming audio channels. One proven solution to this problem is to distort the signals with a nonlinear device. In this work, we present new theory that gives insight to the existing links between: i) Coherence and level of distortion, and ii) coherence and achievable misalignment of the stereophonic echo canceler. Furthermore, we present an adaptive nonlinear device that incorporates this new knowledge in such a way that a pre-specified maximum misalignment is maintained while improving the perceived quality by minimizing the introduced distortion. Moreover, ail the ideas presented can be generalized to the multichannel (>2) case.