Inter-channel coherence reduction for stereophonic and multichannel acoustic echo cancellation

Abstract

In an audio system having acoustic echo, incoming audio signals are decorrelated by applying both phase modulation and amplitude modulation. The resulting decorrelated signals are rendered by loudspeakers, and co-located microphones generate outgoing audio signals that include echo signals caused by the existence of acoustic echo paths from the loudspeakers to the microphones. Acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) is applied to the outgoing audio signals to reduce the amount of echo in those signals. Decorrelating the incoming audios signals using amplitude modulation in addition to phase modulation can increase the effectiveness of the AEC processing. In a frequency-domain implementation, the amount of amplitude modulation can be different for different frequency bands (e.g., greater amplitude modulation for lower frequencies corresponding to human speech and/or no amplitude modulation for higher frequencies).