Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Ikanos Communications, Inc.

Yuwen Su

Robert Ayrapetian

Arnaud Jean-Louis Charton

Philip Ryan Hilmes

Michael Alan Pogue

Kurt W Piersol

Sam Heidari

Behrooz Rezvani

Preethi Narayanan

Qasem Aldrubi

Hojat Khelghati

Gabe Beddingfield

Jianchun Dong

Wai Chung Chu

Peng Zhang

Xuan Zhong

Shahram Talakoub

Hyeong Cheol Kim

A head-mounted wearable device (HMWD) provides audio output from a first speaker that is driven with a first signal and a second speaker that is driven with a second signal. Based on a volume level setting, an equalization profile and inversion frequency are determined. The equalization profile selectively amplifies or attenuates particular frequencies or ranges of frequencies. Those frequencies in the second signal that are above the inversion frequency have their amplitude inverted, relative to the first signal. When driven by the first signal and the second signal, the first speaker and the second speaker operate as acoustic dipoles below the inversion frequency and acoustic quadrupoles above the inversion frequency. Sound from the first and second speakers with frequencies above the inversion frequency exhibits destructive interference. As a result, the user wearing the HMWD is able hear audio output while audio amplitude perceived by the bystanders is significantly reduced.

System for presentation of audio using wearable device

Systems and methods for disabling adaptive echo cancellation functionality for a temporal window are provided herein. In some embodiments, audio data may be received by a voice activated electronic device, where the audio data may include an utterance of a wakeword that may be subsequently followed by additional speech. A start time of when the wakeword began to be uttered may be determined by the voice activated electronic device, and the voice activated electronic device may also send the audio data to a backend system. Adaptive echo cancellation functionality may be disabled at the start time. The backend system may determine an end time of the speech, and may provide an indication to the voice activated electronic device of the end time, which in turn may cause the voice activated electronic device to enable the adaptive echo cancellation functionality at the end time.

Adaptive echo cancellation

An acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) system that detects and compensates for differences in delay times between the AEC system and a set of wireless speakers. The filter coefficients used for AEC are adjusted based on the determined delay time to correct for frequency domain signal rotation.

Multichannel acoustic echo cancellation for wireless applications

A system may be configured to interact with a user through speech using a first and second audio devices, where the first device produces audio and the second device captures audio. The second device may be configured to perform acoustic echo cancellation with respect to a microphone signal based on a reference signal provided by the first device. The reference and microphone signals may have the same nominal signal rates. However, the signal rates may drift from each other over time. In order to synchronize the rates of the signals, each of the devices maintains a signal index. The second device compares the values of the two signal indexes over time to determine rate differences between the reference and microphone signals and then corrects for the rate differences.

Signal rate synchronization for remote acoustic echo cancellation

An acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) system that detects and compensates for differences in sample rates between the AEC system and a set of wireless speakers based on a search-based trial-and-error technique. The system individually determines a frequency offset for each microphone-speaker pair using an iterative process, determining an echo-return loss enhancement (ERLE) value for each offset that is tried, and selecting the frequency offset associated with the largest ERLE value.

Clock synchronization for multichannel system

An echo cancellation system that generates multiple output paths, enabling Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) processing in parallel with voice communication. For single direction AEC (e.g., ASR processing), the system prioritizes speech from a single user and ignores other speech by selecting a single directional output from a plurality of directional outputs as a first output path. For multi-directional AEC (e.g., voice communication), the system includes all speech by combining the plurality of directional outputs as a second output path. The system may use a weighted sum technique, such that each directional output is represented in the combined output based on a corresponding signal metric, or an equal weighting technique, such that a first group of directional outputs having a higher signal metric may be equally weighted using a first weight while a second group of directional outputs having a lower signal metric may be equally weighted using a second weight.

Parallel output paths for acoustic echo cancellation

A multi-channel audio communication system is configured to receive highly correlated input audio signals, generated as an example by multiple microphones at a far-end site. Each input audio signal is cyclically stepped through a range of discrete delay amounts, between upper and lower limits, using a step size that is a fraction of the sample period of the input audio signals. Delay cycles applied to the different input audio signals are configured to have different phases, thereby reducing the inter-signal correlation of the input audio signals. The delayed input audio signals are then played by loudspeakers. Microphone output, which may contain sound generated by the loudspeakers, is then subjected to multi-channel acoustic echo cancellation.

Cyclically variable signal delays for acoustic echo cancellation

Features are disclosed for measuring and correcting clock drift and propagation delay in an audio system through one or more waveforms embedded in an audio signal. A first device in communication with a speaker may be configured to obtain an audio signal and insert one or more waveforms into the audio signal. For example, the waveforms may be inserted during an interval of time. A second device in communication with a microphone may be configured to detect sound as an audio input signal. The second device may obtain a spectral representation of the audio input signal and determine a rotation based on the spectral representation at the frequency of at least one of the inserted waveforms. Clock drift may be determined based on the rotation.

Correcting clock drift via embedded sine waves

Features are disclosed for adaptively estimating propagation delay in an audio system. A first device in communication with a speaker may be configured produce sound based on an audio playback signal. A second device in communication with one or more microphones may be configured to detect sound as a microphone signal. The second device may perform acoustic echo cancellation using a first propagation delay parameter and determine a first echo return loss enhancement. The second device may perform acoustic echo cancellation using a second propagation delay parameter and determine a second echo return loss enhancement. A propagation delay between the audio playback signal and the microphone signal may be adaptively estimated based on a comparison of the first and second echo return loss enhancements.

Adaptive estimation of delay in audio systems

Correcting clock drift via embedded sin waves

Features are disclosed for estimating a noise level using a variable step size. An acoustic echo canceller (AEC) may be configured to perform echo cancellation. The acoustic echo canceller may determine an estimated echo using a playback signal. The acoustic echo canceller also may determine an estimated error using the estimated echo and a microphone signal. A variable step size may be determined using the estimated error and the microphone signal. Noise reduction may be performed using the variable step size.

Noise estimation algorithm for non-stationary environments

A acoustic echo canceller (AEC) system may be configured to perform echo cancellation in the frequency domain. Features are disclosed for determining an estimated echo in the frequency domain using adaptive filters. An adaptive filter corresponding to a frequency bin can comprise a plurality of filter taps. Additional features are disclosed for updating the adaptive filter. In addition, a frequency-bin dependent step size controller may be used to control a step size used in updating the adaptive filters. Features are disclosed for determining the frequency-bin dependent step size.

Frequency domain acoustic echo cancellation using filters and variable step-size updates

The current invention provides a method and apparatus for wireline characterization is disclosed. The method may be implemented with any modulation protocol but is particularly suited for multi-carrier modulation protocols such as discrete multi-tone (DMT). The apparatus may be incorporated into physical or logical modems. In an embodiment of the invention an apparatus for wireline characterization in a modem with a transmit path and a receive path each configured to couple with a remote modem via a wireline in which available communication bandwidth is split into a number of independent sub-channels is disclosed. The apparatus comprises: a tone selector, a cumulative loss estimator and a shift register. The tone selector selects a subset of the number of sub-channels within the bandwidth of a received wireline communication for which subset the sum of the square roots of the corresponding sub-channel indices may be expressed as an integer power &ldquo;n&rdquo; of 2. The cumulative loss estimator cumulates the insertion losses across the selected subset of the sub-channels and outputs a binary value corresponding thereto. The shift register couples to the cumulative loss estimator to scale a magnitude of the binary value received from the cumulative loss estimator by an amount proportionate to &ldquo;n&rdquo; to obtain a scaled electrical distance estimate for the wireline. Corresponding method and means are disclosed.

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Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Yuwen Su