Evaluation of a channel decorrelation approach for stereo acoustic echo cancellation

Multichannel acoustic echo cancellers are used in teleconferencing systems in order to reduce undesired echoes and to introduce better performance in terms of sound localization in the presence of more than one participant. In this context, stereophonic systems obtain realistic performance, since listeners have spatial information that helps to identify the speaker position. Unfortunately, the correlation between the two channels prevents a correct identification of the echo paths and signal decorrelation is needed. In this paper, a subjective analysis of a low-complexity implementation of a real-time decorrelation approach is presented. The analyzed approach is based on the “missing-fundamental” phenomenon and it is focused on the computation of one adaptive parameter in order to guarantee high performance in terms of convergence speed, audio quality, and computational complexity. A deeply investigation of the subjective perception is here presented, confirming the effectiveness of the proposed approach and showing its feasibility in real scenarios.