System and method for estimating secondary path impulse response for active noise cancellation

Abstract

A system and method for estimating secondary path impulse response (IR) for an active noise cancellation (ANC) system to enhance performance of the ANC system in a near-imperceptible manner is provided. An adaptive music interference canceller (AMIC) uses music signals as test signals and ANC error microphones to estimate the secondary path IR between all speakers and microphones. The system validates that the music signals have sufficient audio content to be considered an adequate test signal. Furthermore, the system employs additional signal processing to ensure that a unique IR for all speakers and microphones can be obtained using the audio test signals. New coefficients of the AMIC filter are calculated, in real time, using the music signals and can be copied into the estimated secondary path for the ANC system. A supervisor unit manages enabling and disabling the AMIC as needed for calculating and copying coefficients.