A High Speech Quality Distance-Based Howling Canceller with Adaptive Cascade Notch Filter and Silent Pilot Signal

Akira SOGAMI  Arata KAWAMURA  Youji IIGUNI  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences   Vol.E94-A   No.11   pp.2306-2314
Publication Date: 2011/11/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1337
DOI: 10.1587/transfun.E94.A.2306
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Smart Multimedia & Communication Systems)
Category: Speech Processing
Keyword: 
howling canceller,  adaptive filter,  notch filter,  pilot signal,  

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Summary: 
We have previously proposed a howling canceller which cancels howling by using a cascade notch filter designed from a distance between a loudspeaker and a microphone. This method utilizes a pilot signal to estimate the distance. In this paper, we introduce two methods into the distance-based howling canceller to improve speech quality. The first one is an adaptive cascade notch filter which adaptively adjusts the nulls to eliminate howling and to keep speech components. The second one is a silent pilot signal whose frequencies exist in the ultrasonic band, and it is inaudible while on transmission. We implement the proposed howling canceller on a DSP to evaluate its capability. The experimental results show that the proposed howling canceller improves speech quality in comparison to the conventional one.