A Signal Decorrelation PNLMS Algorithm for Double-Talk Acoustic Echo Cancellation

Acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) in voiced communication systems is used to eliminate the echo which corrupts the speech signal and reduces the efficiency of signal transmission. Usually, the performance of AEC system based on the adaptive filtering degrades seriously in the presence of speech issued from the near-end speaker (double-talk). In typical AEC scenarios, double-talk detector (DTD) must be added to AEC for improving speech quality. One of the main problems in AEC with DTD is that the DTD errors can result in either large residual echo or distorting the near-end input speech. Considering the strong correlation property of speech signals, this paper presents a novel proportionate decorrelation normalized least-mean-square (PDNLMS) adaptive AEC without DTD for echo cancellation as an interesting alternative to the typical AEC with DTDs. Unlike traditional AEC with a DTD, the proposed PDNLMS uses the difference of near-end speech as the residual error to update adaptive echo channel filter during the periods of double-talk, which can efficiently reduce the double-talk influence on the AEC adaptation process. The experimental results show that not only the proposed PDNLMS without DTD illustrate better stability and faster convergence rate, but it is also of a lower steady-state misalignment and better residual signal than current methods with DTDs at a lower computational cost.