Adaptive signal processing assignment

Adaptive Echo Cancellation

Submitted By 1. Abhiram.P CB.EN.U4ECE08201 2. Amith Prabhakar CB.EN.U4ECE08202 3. Anoop P.R. CB.EN.U4ECE08204 4. J.I.Sindhuja CB.EN.U4ECE08215

Echo Cancellation using Adaptive Signal Processing

What is an Echo?
A sound or series of sounds caused by the reflection of sound waves from a surface back to the listener.

What is echo cancellation?

Echo cancellation refers to the process of removing echo (in this context, copies of the original signal that are delayed and scaled down) from a communications channel by using

channel estimation and equalization (accounting for the irregularities in the signal output due
to the channel).

Echo induced communication models are many in number, mostly for RADAR, SONAR and Telecommunications.
() = () + ( ) , is a signal with echo (only a single reflection an ideal case chosen for modeling, usually infinite number of reflections). () = ()(1 + 1 ) Where reflection coefficient, propagation delay

General Model

And so the filter transfer function becomes,

Hence, we can remove the reflection, by passing the input through the filter with the above transfer function. The infinite impulse response of the above filter is as shown, () = 1 + 2 2 3 3 +

() =

1 () = () (1 + 1 )

So the time span of the echo cancellation filter will be ( 1) seconds.

For a finite implementation, this has to be truncated to M terms, this truncation will result in a residual echo in the output of the order of .

FIR filters used for echo cancellation often consists of tens to hundreds of filter coefficients. To design this filter we need to make an accurate estimate of and from the observed signal. The simplest method for doing this is correlating the observed signal with the transmitting signal (limitation knowledge of the transmitting signal). In this case the peak at zero lag corresponds to the direct signal and the peak appearing after some delay corresponds to the reflected signal. The relative peak height and the position of the peak are the estimates of and , respectively. Thus, when we have no

knowledge of the transmission we need to make assumptions and then use an adaptive algorithm to find these coefficients.

Practical problems due to echo

Mainly the problems are experienced in radar, sonar and in telephone networks. The latter is of greater interest and greater commercial impact.

Shallow water
There are at least two echoes resulting from water/air interface (Reflection coefficient = -1) and at the sea bottom. This is mainly because, the direct path from source to receiver is smaller than reflected paths and so there are delayed and scaled down versions of the signal at the receiver. Fortunately the effects such as attenuation through water medium and scattering at the boundaries of the media will reduce the echo strength drastically.

Source Receiver coupling

Coupling between a microphone and a speaker may occur as for example in a public address system or in a hands free telephone in a car, or a personal computer used in teleconferencing, even in a cell phone. The point is some radiation from the loudspeaker reaches the microphone directly. Here the feedback can occur indefinite number of times. The delay time being the time it takes the radiation to go from the loudspeaker to the microphone and the scaling factor being the attenuation of the channel. This is also referred to as acoustic echo.

Telephone Networks
When two telephone users are connected along a network, the connection from the user to the local exchange is through a two wire line and the connection between exchanges is a 4 wire line. The device that connects these two lines is known as a hybrid.

Due to the mismatched impedances present in this device, echoes are generated in the communication channels that are very irritating to the user who hears a delayed version of their

own voice on the speaker. This is known as hybrid echo.

How adaptive echo cancellation works

Quite simply an adaptive echo canceller (with an adaptive algorithm) is fed an initial set of inputs map the echo and subtract the estimated echo from the received signal (adaptive estimation of the FIR filter coefficients) from assumptions made about the channel, and then with continuous iterations can

There are two measures of performance of an adaptive echo canceller: the speed of adaptation and the accuracy of the cancellation after adaptation.

There is a tradeoff between these two measures: for a particular class of adaptation algorithm, as the speed of adaptation is increased the accuracy of the transfer function after adaptation gets poorer. This tradeoff is fundamental, since a longer averaging time is necessary to increase asymptotic accuracy, but slows the rate of convergence. Usually the motivation for adapting an echo canceller is that the transfer function of the echo is not known in advance. It is also probable that the echo transfer function is changing with time, although in most cases the change will be quite slow (say in response to changes in the temperature of the transmission facilities). Thus, in most instances the accuracy of the final cancellation of the echo is the most critical design factor. Although the ability of the canceller to rapidly track a changing echo response is usually not important, the speed of initial adaptation from an arbitrary initial condition is often important. For instance, in a voice band data modem, the echo canceler must converge anew at the beginning of each call. The adaptation of the echo canceller is therefore a part of the initialization sequence before useful data transmission can occur. Since one would like to minimize that initialization time, there is motivation to adapt as quickly as possible.

We use minimum mean squared error (MSE) solution followed by stochastic gradient (SG) algorithm; this is the most widely used algorithm for adaptive echo cancellation.

References Modern digital signal processing by Prabhakar.S.Naidu and the World Wide Web.