U.S. Philips Corporation

U.S. Phillips Corporation

Johannes M Meijer

Petrus J Van Gerwen

Theodoor A Claasen

Martinus L Didden

Gerardus F Beenker

Cornelis Pieter Janse

A conference system comprises speaker units (12) coupled to a central unit (14). The speaker unit (12) comprises an echo canceller (20) with an adaptive filter (38) having an impulse response of comparatively short duration. In a speech pause of the user of the speaker unit (12) the common listening signal (LS) of the conference system is applied to the loudspeaker (18). Of the sounds then picked up by the microphone (16) only those sounds are compensated which are produced by the loudspeaker (18) and which reach the microphone (16) directly and which reach the microphone (16) indirectly via reflections from nearby objects. These sounds have a comparatively short impulse response time and enable a comparatively simple adaptive filter (38) to be used. The other sounds picked up by the microphone (16) reach the microphone (16) via reflections from the walls of the conference space (10) in which the conference system is situated. The other sounds have a comparatively long impulse response time. For the purpose of automatic speech detection these other sounds do not require echo cancellation because they are the same for all the speaker units. Automatic speech detection is now accomplished if the signal strength of the compensated microphone signal (MCCS) produced by the echo canceller (20) exceeds the average signal level of the speaker units.

Conference system with automatic speaker detection and speaker unit

A data transmission system comprising a transversal smearing filter at the transmitting end and a transversal desmearing filter at the receiving end. To simplify the filters, at least the sequence of coefficients of the desmearing filter is formed by elements of the set {-1, 0, +1}, which results in an optimum smearing of noise pulses in the system compared with a system without such a filter.

Data transmission system

A transmission system for transmitting data signals in a modulation band comprising a transversal smearing filter at the transmitter end and a transversal desmearing filter at the receiver end. In order to obtain an optimum smearing efficiency, the sequence of real individual coefficients of the multiplying factors of the transversal desmearing filter satisfy the requirement that for a given upper limit for the intersymbol interference produced by the cascade arrangement formed by the smearing filter, and the desmearing filter a substantially maximum value is derived for a merit factor indicating by what factor the maximum value of a disturbance is decreased by including a smearing filter and a desmearing filter in the transmission system.

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Eindhoven, Netherlands

Johannes M Meijer