Recursive identification of acoustic echo systems using orthonormal basis functions

In hands-free telephone or video conference application, there exists an acoustic feedback coupling between the loudspeaker and microphone in an enclosed environment, which creates the acoustic echo. FIR filters are commonly used in acoustic echo cancellers because of their simple structure. However, in this paper, the Kautz and Laguerre filter structures are shown to be more efficient echo cancellers than the FIR filters, because they can describe accurately the acoustic echo system with fewer parameters. These filters are built from their respective orthonormal Kautz and Laguerre basis functions. The proposal is motivated by some theoretical and numerical results that the time-varying acoustic echo path is basically due to its time-varying zeros and not its time-invariant acoustical poles. Therefore, the poles of the Kautz and the Laguerre filters are estimated, and can be kept fixed or updated occasionally if required. The poles are estimated by a batch Gauss-Newton algorithm. Then, the coefficients of the Kautz and Laguerre filters can be estimated by most recursive algorithms that are suitable for linear regression models, e.g., the normalized LMS algorithm. Generally, it is shown that the proposed Kautz and Laguerre filters, as the filter structures in an acoustic echo canceller, have better convergence and tracking properties than the FIR and IIR filters.