A blind approach to joint noise and acoustic echo cancellation

The paper introduces a new scheme which combines the popular blind signal separation (BSS) and a post-processor to suppress noise and acoustic echo jointly. The new L element structure uses the BSS as a front-end processor to extract the target signal spatially from the interference (noise and echo). Statistical measures are then employed to select the target signal dominant signal from the BSS outputs. The remaining L-1 BSS outputs (noise and echo dominant) and the existing far-end line echo are then used as the reference signals in an adaptive noise canceller (ANC) to enhance the target signal temporally. The novel structure bypasses the need for any a priori information whilst compensating the separation quality of the BSS temporally. Real room evaluations demonstrate the efficacy of the scheme in both noisy double-talk and non double-talk situations.