Adaptive control system for noise cancellation

• US 7,092,529 B2
• Filed: 11/01/2002
• Issued: 08/15/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 11/01/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Technological University Innovation and Technology Transfer Office
• Original Assignee: Nanyang Technology University
• Inventors: Rahardja, Susanto, Zhang, Ming, Yu, Zhuliang, Lan, Hui
• Primary Examiner(s): Chin, Vivian
• Assistant Examiner(s): KURR, JASON RICHARD
• Application Number:
  US10/285,641
• Publication Number:
  US 20040086137A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,383 Days
• Field of Search: 381/71.11, 381/71.1, 381/71.12, 381/71.8
• US Class Current: 381/71.11
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2021/02165 Two microphones, one receiving mainly the noise signal and the other one mainly the speech signal
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 21/0208 Noise filtering

Abstract

An adaptive noise canceling system for extracting a desired signal, comprising an adaptive noise cancellation filtering circuit for suppressing noise from a first input signal using a second input signal as a reference signal, and generating an output filtered signal representing the desired signal; and an adaptive noise cancellation controller for receiving the first and second input signals and the output filtered signal, and generating an output control signal for controlling coefficients of at least one adaptive filter of the adaptive noise cancellation filtering circuit, comprising a silence detector unit for detecting whether an acoustical signal is present in the input signals and the output filtered signal, and generating a first output signal which indicates whether the acoustical signal is present; a signal detector unit for detecting whether the desired signal is present in the input signals and the output filtered signal, and generating a second output signal which indicates whether the desired signal is present; and an adaptive noise cancellation filter (ANCF) controller unit for receiving the first and second output signal to determine the characteristic of the input signals, and generating the output control signal which represents an updated coefficient parameter for updating the coefficients of the at least one adaptive filter of the adaptive noise cancellation filtering circuit.

Claims

1. An adaptive noise canceling system for extracting a desired signal, comprising

an adaptive noise cancellation filtering circuit for suppressing noise from a first input signal using a second input signal as a reference signal, and generating an output filtered signal representing the desired signal;

and

an adaptive noise cancellation controller for receiving the first and the second input signals and the output filtered signal, and generating an output control signal for controlling coefficients of at least one adaptive filter of the adaptive noise cancellation filtering circuit, comprising

a silence detector unit for receiving signals respectively derived from the first input signal, the second input signal and the output filtered signal, detecting whether an acoustical signal is present in the input signals and the output filtered signal using the received signals, and generating a first output signal which indicates whether the acoustical signal is present;

a signal detector unit for receiving signals respectively derived from the first input signal, the second input signal and the output filtered signal, detecting whether the desired signal is present in the input signals and the output filtered signal using the received signals, and generating a second output signal which indicates whether the desired signal is present; and

an adaptive noise cancellation filter (ANCF) controller unit for receiving the first and the second output signals to determine the characteristic of the input signals, and generating the output control signal which represents an updated coefficient parameter for updating the coefficients of the at least one adaptive filter of the adaptive noise cancellation filtering circuit.

2. The adaptive noise canceling system according to claim 1, wherein the adaptive noise cancellation controller further comprises a power estimator unit for receiving each of the input signals and the output filtered signal, and generates a power signal corresponding to each of the estimated power of the input signals and the output filtered signal, the power signal to be received by the silence detector unit and the signal detector unit.

3. The adaptive noise canceling system according to claim 1, further comprising a post processing filtering circuit for reducing noise from the output filtered signal, wherein the post processing filtering circuit is adapted to receive the first and the second input signals, the output filtered signal and to generate a coefficient signal to be used as the coefficients of at least one filter, such that the at least one filter is able to reduce noise from the output filtered signal and to generate a digital result signal representing the noise reduced desired signal.

4. The adaptive noise canceling system according to claim 3, wherein the adaptive noise cancellation controller further comprises a post processing filter controller unit for receiving and processing the first and the second output signal signals to determine the characteristic of the first and the second input signals, the post processing controller unit being adapted to generate a further output control signal which represents an updated coefficient parameter for updating the coefficients of the at least one filter of the post processing filtering circuit.

5. An adaptive directional noise canceling microphone system, comprising

an omni-directional microphone having a first directivity pattern, thereby providing a similar gain for sounds at least from a first direction and from a second direction;

and a directional microphone having a second directivity pattern, thereby providing a higher gain for sounds from the first direction than the second direction;

the omni-directional microphone and the directional microphone being arranged in a closely acoustically-coupled way; and

the adaptive noise canceling system according to any one of claims 1 to 4 for receiving signals resulting from the sounds received by the omni-directional microphone and the directional microphones, and for generating the digital result signal representing sounds from the first direction with the sounds from the second direction suppressed.

6. The adaptive directional noise canceling microphone system according to claim 5, further comprising a first and a second amplifier for receiving and amplifying the signals resulting from the sounds received by the omni-directional microphone and the directional microphones.

7. The adaptive directional noise canceling microphone system according to claim 6, further comprising a first and a second low pass filter for receiving and filtering the amplified signals from the first and the second amplifiers, thereby generating analog amplified and filtered signals.

8. The adaptive directional noise canceling microphone system according to claim 7, further comprising a first and a second Analog-to-Digital converter for receiving and converting the analog amplified and filtered signals from the first and the second low pass filters to digital signals, thereby generating the first and the second input signals.

9. The adaptive directional noise canceling microphone system according to claim 5, further comprising a Digital-to-Analog converter for receiving and converting the digital result signal to an analog signal, thereby generating an result signal output.