2236008 Ontario Limited

Blackberry Corporation

Creative Technology Corporation

Michael Andrew Percy

Mark Robert Every

Phillip Alan Hetherington

Mark Fallat

Frank Linseisen

Kyle Tegan MacDonald

Leonard Charles Layton

Mohammad Aamir Husain

Mark William Harvey

Rodney Dwight Rempel

Peter Stokes

Mark Ryan Fallat

A method of echo cancellation in hands-free communication is disclosed. The method includes: receiving, via a receive signal processor, a far-end audio signal; providing the far-end audio signal to: an acoustic echo canceller module as a reference signal, and at least one loudspeaker for playback; determining an external gain value associated with the far-end audio signal, the external gain applied to the far-end audio signal downstream of the receive signal processor and prior to playback from the at least one loudspeaker; adjusting at least one parameter of the acoustic echo canceller module based on the external gain value; receiving playback output of the far-end audio signal from the at least one loudspeaker as an input signal to a microphone; and processing the microphone input signal by the adjusted acoustic echo canceller module to produce an echo-cancelled signal.

System and method for reducing distortion and echo leakage in hands-free communication

A method and system of fault detection for an alert generation system. In the audio alert generation system, a stored digital alert audio file is selected to be processed to generate an analog audio signal to drive a speaker. An alert fault detection system obtaining a signal from the audio alert generation system, converts the obtained signal to a digitally-formatted obtained audio signal, detects a fault in the audio alert generation system by comparing the digitally-formatted obtained audio signal with the stored digital alert audio file, and triggers a fault indicator.

Alert fault detection system and method

A system and method automates the tuning of one or more hands-free library parameters. The system and method plays one or more test signals that vary in frequency and in amplitude out of a hands-free system under test or the hands-free tuning system and records the responses of a hands-free tuning system or hands-free tuning system at a microphone of the hands-free tuning system and a microphone of the hands-free system under test. The system and method measures the sound generation and sound pickup characteristics of the hands-free system under test or the hands-free system with respect to the one or more of the test signals and one or more of the microphone signals. The system and method calculates tunable parameters. The system and method updates a hands-free system library with the calculated plurality of tunable parameters.

System for automating tuning hands-free systems

An active noise equalization (ANE) system may be run on the existing audio/infotainment system as a software library. The ANE system may share components (e.g., microphones and sensors) with other audio applications. Some ANEs include a complex-domain formulation of a multiple-frequency multiple-channel ANE that requires less memory and processing requirements. The complex-domain system replaces the multiplication of multiple real gains with multiple real signals with a single complex multiplication operation.

Active noise equalization

The suppression of off-axis audio in an audio environment is provided. Off-axis audio may be considered audio that does not originate from a region of interest. The off-axis audio is suppressed by comparing a phase difference between signals from two microphones to a target slope of the phase difference between signals originating from the region of interest. The target slope can be adapted to allow the region of interest to move with the location of a human speaker such as a driver.

Off-axis audio suppression in an automobile cabin

In an adaptive phase discovery system a first audio signal is received via a first microphone and a second signal is received via a second microphone. Corresponding audio frames of the first and second signals are each transformed into the frequency domain and a plurality of frequency sub-bands are generated. A phase is determined for each frequency sub-band in each signal. Instantaneous phase differences are determined between the signals at each of the frequency sub-bands. Lower frequency instantaneous phase differences are filtered over time to determine current phase differences at lower frequencies. When SNR is high in lower frequency sub-bands, lower frequency sub-band phase differences are tracked to the higher frequency sub-bands. The tracked higher frequency phase differences are filtered over time to determine phase differences for the current frame. The phase differences may be used to rotate phases in each sub-band and sum signals and/or to reject off-axis signals.

Adaptive phase discovery

Off-axis audio suppressions in an automobile cabin

The invention relates to systems for driving computer peripherals having features, such as 3D sound capability, which are not envisaged by generic operating system for the computer. In order to adapt computers subject to existing operating systems, such as the Microsoft Windows family of systems, to such peripherals for which there is thus no driver capability, the invention provides a device driving system including additional driver, interposed between the operating system and an existing installed driver and configured to interface directly with the operating system. The additional driver is preferably also configured to interface with the existing installed driver.

Growing community of inventors

Vancouver, Canada

Michael Andrew Percy