TY - JOUR

T1 - Velocity-Controlled Kalman Filter for an Improved Echo Cancellation with Continuously Moving Microphones

AU - Nophut, Marcel

AU - Preihs, Stephan

AU - Peissig, Jürgen

PY - 2024/1

Y1 - 2024/1

N2 - Modern telepresence systems incorporating spatial audio can be realized using multichannel loudspeaker reproduction in combination with close-up microphones attached to the sound sources. With the microphones being tracked in space by external sensors, this setup provides an excellent basis for creating interactive virtual acoustic environments. However, the induced acoustical echo loop has to be handled by a suitable acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) system. A popular state-of-the-art adaptive filter with desirable properties for AEC in multichannel systems is the frequency-domain adaptive Kalman filter (FDKF). Combined with previously proposed enhancements, it shows good performance for minor or abrupt echo path changes but has shortcomings with massive and continuous echo path changes, as caused by moving microphones. This article proposes a velocity-controlled FDKF (VC-FDKF) exploiting the knowledge of the microphone motion for a twofold velocity-dependent contribution to the update step-size. The method has been evaluated in simulations with nonsynthetic recorded measurement data considering different trajectories, velocity profiles, signal types, and loudspeaker setups. Common existing approaches, as the shadow filtering technique, are outperformed by the proposed VC-FDKF in our experiments. Furthermore, two extensions of the proposed technique, namely, a position-dependent gain-and-delay compensation and alternative velocity definitions, are briefly studied.

AB - Modern telepresence systems incorporating spatial audio can be realized using multichannel loudspeaker reproduction in combination with close-up microphones attached to the sound sources. With the microphones being tracked in space by external sensors, this setup provides an excellent basis for creating interactive virtual acoustic environments. However, the induced acoustical echo loop has to be handled by a suitable acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) system. A popular state-of-the-art adaptive filter with desirable properties for AEC in multichannel systems is the frequency-domain adaptive Kalman filter (FDKF). Combined with previously proposed enhancements, it shows good performance for minor or abrupt echo path changes but has shortcomings with massive and continuous echo path changes, as caused by moving microphones. This article proposes a velocity-controlled FDKF (VC-FDKF) exploiting the knowledge of the microphone motion for a twofold velocity-dependent contribution to the update step-size. The method has been evaluated in simulations with nonsynthetic recorded measurement data considering different trajectories, velocity profiles, signal types, and loudspeaker setups. Common existing approaches, as the shadow filtering technique, are outperformed by the proposed VC-FDKF in our experiments. Furthermore, two extensions of the proposed technique, namely, a position-dependent gain-and-delay compensation and alternative velocity definitions, are briefly studied.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85183315240&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.17743/jaes.2022.0116

DO - 10.17743/jaes.2022.0116

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85183315240

VL - 72

SP - 33

EP - 43

JO - AES: Journal of the Audio Engineering Society

JF - AES: Journal of the Audio Engineering Society

SN - 1549-4950

IS - 1-2

ER -