International Journal of Computer & Mathematical Sciences

IJCMS
ISSN 2347 8527
Volume 5, Issue 3
March 2016

Survey on Echo Cancellation using Adaptive Filter Algorithm

Jitendra kumar Pathak Krishna Raj
Dept. of Electronics Engineering H.B Dept. of Electronics Engineering H. B.
Technological Institute Kanpur, India Technological Institute Kanpur India

Abstract: Echo cancellation is the one of the Essential and challenging part of the digital signal processing. Echo
adversely affects the quality of signal which we want to process. Adaptive digital filter algorithms (like LMS, NLMS,
PNLMS and IPNLMS etc.) are one of the important ways to remove Echo from the signals. In this paper we provide a
survey of the main work on Echo cancellation to date.
Keywords- Echo Cancellation, adaptive filter, digital signal processing, LMS, NLMS, PLMS and IPLMS.

I Introduction
Echo is the repetition of a waveform due to reflection from points where the characteristics of the medium
through which the wave propagates changes. Echo is usefully employed in sonar and radar for detection and
exploration purposes. In telecommunication, echo can degrade the quality of service, and echo cancellation is
an important part of Communication systems. Echo Cancellation in Telecommunication requires identification
of unknown Echo path impulse response. The length of network echo path is typically in the range between 32
to 128 milliseconds. This is characterized by bulk delay, depending on network loading, encoding and jitter
delay [3]. Because of this, active region of echo path is in the range between 8 and 12 milliseconds, so it
contains mainly inactive components where coefficient magnitudes are close to zero, making the impulse
response sparser. In general, adaptive filters have been used to estimate the unknown echo path by using
algorithms such as least-mean-square (LMS) Normalized least-mean square (NLMS) Proportionate
normalized least mean square (PNLMS) and improved proportionate normalized least mean square
(IPNLMS).[4]
This paper is organized as follow, in section II we discuss about types of echo and their characteristics, after
that in section III discuss the principle of Echo canceller in section IV we discuss about the recent work
related to the Echo cancellation and finally in the last section conclusion of this literature is given.

II Types of Echo
A. Telephone Line Hybrid Echo
Hybrid echo is the main source of echo generated from the public-switched telephone network (PSTN).
Echoes on a telephone line are due to the Reflection of signals at the points of impedance mismatch on the
Connecting circuits. Conventionally, telephones in a given geographical area are connected to an exchange by
a 2-wire twisted line, called the subscriber's line, which serves to receive and transmit signals. For a local call,
there is usually no noticeable echo either because there is not a significant impedance mismatch on the
connecting 2-wire local lines or because the distances are relatively small and the resulting low-delay echoes
are perceived as a slight amplification and livening effect. For long-distance communication between two
exchanges, it is necessary to use repeaters to amplify the speech signals; therefore a separate 2-wire telephone
line is required for each direction of transmission.

Hybrid A Hybrid B
Echo of
B

Telephone-A Telephone-B
Echo of
A
Speaker Speaker

Figure: 1 Telephone line Hybrid Echo

1 Jitendra kumar Pathak, Krishna Raj

 International Journal of Computer & Mathematical Sciences
IJCMS
ISSN 2347 8527
Volume 5, Issue 3
March 2016

B. Acoustic Echo
Acoustic echo results from a feedback path set up between the speaker and the microphone in a mobile phone,
hands-free phone, teleconference or Hearing aid system. Acoustic echo is usually reflected from a multitude
of different surfaces, such as walls, ceilings and floors, and travels through different paths. If the time delay is
not too long then the acoustic echo may be perceived as a soft reverberation, and may add to the artistic
quality of the sound. However, acoustic echo is a well-known problem with hands-free telephones,
teleconference systems, public address systems, mobile phones, and hearing aids, and is due to acoustic
feedback coupling of sound waves between the loudspeakers and microphones. Acoustic echo can result from
a combination of direct acoustic coupling and multipath effect where the sound wave is reflected from various
surfaces and then picked up by the microphone. In its worst case, acoustic feedback can result in howling if a
significant proportion of the sound energy transmitted by the loudspeaker is received back at the microphone
and circulated in the feedback loop. The overall round gain of an acoustic feedback loop depends on the
frequency responses of the electrical and the acoustic signal paths.
For-end

Echo

Voice
AE Near end Sender
C

Figure: 2 Acoustic Echo

III Principle of Echo Canceller

When we transmit full-duplex data, the primary problem is undesired feed-through of the transmitted data
signal into the receiver through the hybrid. This extraneous signal is called Echo. The echo cancellation
method of full-duplex transmission is illustrated in Fig. 2. There is a transmitter (TR) and receiver (REC) on
each end of the connection, and a hybrid is used to provide a virtual four-wire connection between the
transmitter on each end and the receiver on the opposite end. The echo canceler is an adaptive transversal
filter that adaptively learns the response of the hybrid, and generates a replica of that response which is
subtracted from the hybrid output to yield an echo-free received signal.
The echo canceler notation is shown in Fig. 3. The local transmitter signal r(t) at port A generates the
undesired echo signal m(t). This signal is superimposed at the output of the hybrid (port D) with the far
transmitter signal g(t). The canceler takes advantage of its knowledge of the local transmitter signal to
generate a replica of the echo, (t). This replica is subtracted from the echo plus far transmitter signal to yield
e(t), which ideally contains the far transmitter signal g(t) alone. The canceler design depends strongly on the
details of the local transmitter and receiver design.
ECHO CANCELLER SOURCE
OF ECHO
LOCAL A
TRANSMITTE
R C
r(t)
ECHO ECHO
TWO CANCELLER PATH
DIRECTIONS OF
TRANSMISSION m(t) (t)
B D
LOCAL
RECEIVER

FAR TRANSMITTER
g(t)

Figure: 3 Echo cancellations Method Of full-duplex data transmission

2 Jitendra kumar Pathak, Krishna Raj

 International Journal of Computer & Mathematical Sciences
IJCMS
ISSN 2347 8527
Volume 5, Issue 3
March 2016

REC
TR

E E
C HYBR HYBR C
ID ID

REC TR

Figure: 4 the principle and notation of an echo canceler.

Echo Canceller Adaptation Methods

The echo canceller coefficients are adapted to minimize the energy of the echo signal on a telephone
line, say from speaker B to speaker A. Assuming that the speech signals and are uncorrelated,
the energy on the telephone line from B to A is minimized when the echo canceller output is equal
to the echo (m) on the line. The echo canceller coefficients may be adapted using one of the variants of
the recursive least square error (RLS) or the least mean squared error (LMS) adaptation methods. One of the
most widely used algorithms for adaptation of the coefficients of an echo canceller is the normalized least
mean square error (NLMS) method. The time-update equation describing the adaptation of the filter
coefficient vector is
(1)
Where and are the input signal vector
and the coefficient vector of the echo canceller, and is the difference between the signal on the echo line
and the output of the echo synthesizer. Note that the normalizing quantity is the energy of the
input speech to the adaptive filter. The scalar is the adaptation step size, and controls the speed of
convergence, the steady-state error and the stability of the adaptation process. The adaptation algorithm. Most
echo cancellers use variants of the LMS adaptation algorithm. The attractions of the LMS are its relatively
low memory and computational requirements and its ease of implementation and monitoring. The main
drawback of LMS is that it can be sensitive to the eigenvalue spread of the input signal and is not particularly
fast in its convergence rate. However, in practice, LMS adaptation has produced effective line echo
cancellation systems. The recursive least square (RLS) error methods have a faster convergence rate and a
better minimum mean square error performance. With the increasing availability of low-cost high-speed
dedicated DSP processors, implementation of higher- performance and computationally intensive echo
cancellers based on RLS are now feasible.

From
Speaker
A
Adaptive Hybrid Speaker
Filter B B

To
Speaker
A
Echo Canceller

Figure: 5 General configuration of Echo Cancellation

3 Jitendra kumar Pathak, Krishna Raj

 International Journal of Computer & Mathematical Sciences
IJCMS
ISSN 2347 8527
Volume 5, Issue 3
March 2016

IV. Related Work:

In 2000 [4] Donald L. Duttweiler describe Proportionate Normalized least Mean Squares Adaptation in Echo
Cancelers in this paper he describes how the proportionate normalized least mean squares (PNLMS) adaption
algorithm converges significantly faster than the normalized least-mean-squares (NLMS) algorithm generally
used in echo cancelers. In PNLMS adaptation, the adaptation gain at each tap position varies from position to
position and is roughly proportional at each tap position to the absolute value of the current tap weight
estimate. The total adaptation gain being distributed over the taps is carefully monitored and controlled so as
to hold adaptation quality constant. PNLMS adaptation only entails modest increase in computational
complexity.
The PNLMS algorithm differs from the NLMS algorithm in that the variable adaptation energy is distributed
unevenly over the N taps specific equations are given in table I [4]
Table I
PNLMS Algorithm

{ }

In above algorithm, M is the echo canceler length (often 256, 512, or 1024) and is a key parameters called
either the adaptive-filter loop gain or the step size parameter. The notation is intended to reflect an
interpretation as the norm of the vector . The prime in the notation is intended to denote a slight
modification of the usual norm. The new parameters and effect small-signal regularization.
The usual way to measure algorithm complexity is to compute required multiplier. Under this measure, LMS
adaptation has complexity of order 2N. In NLMS adaptation the algorithm is of the order 3N whereas PNLMS
algorithm complexity is 50% more than either NLMS or LMS.
In 2000 [5] Tomas Gansler, steven L. Gay, M.Mohan Sondhi, and Jacob Bensesty, they discuss about Double-
Talk Robust Fast Converging Algorithms for Network Echo Cancellation. In this paper Authors discuss how
the performance on echo canceller is improved. Faster convergence, however, in general implies a higher
sensitivity to near-end disturbances, especially double talk. For this purpose recently, a fast converging
algorithm has been proposed called proportionate normalized least mean squares (PNLMS) algorithm. Author
of this paper proposed a method for making the PNLMS algorithm more robust against double-talk. The
slower divergence rate of these algorithms in combination with a standard Geigel double talk detector
improves the performance of a network echo canceler considerably during double talk. The principle is based
on a scaled nonlinearity which is applied to the residual error signal. This results in the robust PNLMS
algorithm which diverges much slower than the PNLMS and standard NLMS. A Tradeoff between
Convergence and divergence rate is easily adjusted with one parameter and the added complexity is about
seven instructions per sample which less than 0.3% of the total load of a PNLMS algorithm with 512 filter
coefficients. At last in this paper a generalization of the robust PNLMS algorithm to a robust proportionate
affine projection algorithm (PAPA) is explained. It converges very fast, and unlike PNLMS, is not as
dependent on the assumption of a sparse echo path response. The complexity of the robust proportionate APA
of order two is roughly the same as that of PNLMS.[5]

4 Jitendra kumar Pathak, Krishna Raj

 International Journal of Computer & Mathematical Sciences
IJCMS
ISSN 2347 8527
Volume 5, Issue 3
March 2016

Algorithm Multiplication Divisions

NLMS 2L+S 1

PNLMS 4L+S 1

PAPA (p+2)L+18p 5

PAPA(p=2) 4L+12 3

In 2002 [6] Jocob Benesty and steven L. Gay gives An Improved PNLMS Algorithms Author of this paper
proposed a new algorithm for Network echo canceler called An Improved Proportionate normalized least-
mean squares (IPNLMS) algorithms. The PNLMS algorithm performing well in comparison to NLMS in
terms of initial convergence only when the echo path is sparse but unfortunately, when the impulse response is
dispersive, the PNLMS converges much slower than NLMS. In this paper shows many simulation result for
different scenario of echo path And for all the condition IPNLMS have better performance than others.
In 2003 [7] Arian Maleki and Kambiz Nayebi, A new Efficient PNLMS Based algorithm for adaptive Line
Echo Cancellation. This paper describes a new modified algorithm of PNLMS called Proportionate
Normalized Sign LMS (PNSLMS) algorithm. The new algorithm shows better performances both in
convergence rate and computational complexity. Echo cancellers with long impulse responses are usually
used in network with the long echoes. Since long adaptive filters with sparse target filters usually converge
very slowly, adaptation algorithms with fast convergence rate are needed.
In 2007 [8] Bhanu Chandra G. and Mitra A. discuss about A fast adaptive echo canceler with leaky
proportionate NLMS algorithm in this paper they proposed a modified version of proportionate normalized
least mean square (PNLMS) algorithm that achieves faster convergence in time domain with a marginal
increment in implementation complexity than the existing one. The proposed algorithm, Leaky PNLMS,
mainly differs from PNLMS by virtue of a leaky factor which speeds up the convergence behavior. They
apply the proposed algorithm in case of an adaptive echo canceler. The performance of the proposed
algorithm is examined in the said application with respect to the mean square error (MSE) and bit error rate
(BER) curves. But the computational complexity of system is increased. In NLMS requires only 3N addition,
3N+1 multiplication and in PNLMS requires 4N addition, 5N+1 multiplication while in Leaky PNLMS
requires 5N addition and 6N+1 multiplication.
In 2008 [9] Pradeep Loganathan, Andy W.H. Khong and Patrick A. Naylor A Sparseness Controlled
Proportionate Algorithm for Acoustic Echo Cancellation. In this article authors gives a new algorithm called
the sparseness-controlled PNLMS (SC-PNLMS) algorithm. Sparseness variation in acoustic impulse response
arises due to change in temperature, pressure, acoustic source movements and changes in the acoustic
environment. Therefore, the algorithms employed in acoustic echo cancellation have performed well for both
sparse and dispersive unknown systems. The well-known algorithms, normalised least mean square (NLMS)
or proportionate NLMS (PNLMS), are limited to perform well either in dispersive or sparse case respectively.
But the proposed algorithm of this paper have inherits the beneficial property of both NLMS and PNLMS by
using sparseness measure into the PNLMS algorithm. Apart from several advantages of this algorithm make
the system complex. In NLMS requires L+3 additions, 2L+3 multiplication, one division while in PNLMS
requires 2L+3 addition, 5L+4 multiplication and L+1 division operation. While in SC-PNLMS requires 4L+6
addition, 6L+8 multiplication and L+3 divisions where L is the length of the filter.
In 2009 [10] Jeronimo Arenas-Garcia and Anibal R. Figueriras-vadal describe Adaptive Combination of
Proportionate Filters for Sparse Echo cancellation. In this Paper authors proposed an alternative method for
echo cancellation rather than normalized least-mean square (NLMS) filter. Proportionate adaptive filters, such
as those based on the improved proportionate normalized least-mean square (IPNLMS) algorithm.
Proportionate schemes offer improved performance when echo path is sparse, but are still some compromises
regarding their convergence properties and steady-state error. The authors shows how combination schemes,
where the output of two independent adaptive filters are adaptively mixed together, can be used to increase
IPNLMS robustness to channels with different degrees of sparsity, as well as to alleviate the rate of
convergence versus steady state misadjustment trade-off imposed by the selection of the step size.

5 Jitendra kumar Pathak, Krishna Raj

 International Journal of Computer & Mathematical Sciences
IJCMS
ISSN 2347 8527
Volume 5, Issue 3
March 2016

In 2011 [11] Loganathan P., Habets. E.A.P and Naylor P.A. discuss about A proportionate adaptive algorithm
with variable partitioned block length for acoustic echo cancellation in this paper they discuss about the
nature of an acoustic enclosure, the early part (i.e., direct path and early reflections) of the acoustic echo path
is often sparse while the late reverberant part of the acoustic path is normally dispersive. In order to account
for this structure within the acoustic impulse response when performing acoustic echo cancellation, we
propose an adaptive filter that consists of two time-domain partition blocks, with adaptive block partitioning,
such that different adaptive algorithms can be used for each block. Specifically, the improved proportionate
normalized least-mean-square (IPNLMS) algorithm is used. Simulation results show that the proposed
variable length partitioned block IPNLMS (VLPB-IPNLMS) algorithm works well in both sparse and
dispersive circumstances and in practical applications involving time-varying systems.
In 2013 [12] Jie Yang and Sobelman, G.E. describes A gradient-controlled proportionate technique for
acoustic echo cancellation. In this paper describes about, the gradient-controlled improved proportionate
affine projection algorithm (GC-IPAPA) and gradientcontrolled improved proportionate normalised least
mean square algorithm (GC-IPNLMS). These algorithms are well performed in Acoustic echo cancellation
(AEC), the echo paths are often long, sparse and rapidly changing environment. The proposed method of this
paper giving a time averaging gradient estimate is assigned as the gain distribution vector to assign individual
step size so that the filter taps are updated proportionally to the magnitude of the mean of the gradient vector.

V. Conclusion
Echo is one of the important topics for discussion. Because Echo affect the signal processing adversely. In this
paper we have discuss about various algorithms developed like LMS, NLMS, PNLMS and IPNLMS for Echo
cancellation in various environment. As researchers move towards to develop a new algorithm for Echo
cancellation complexity of the system will increases. So they must take a tradeoff between complexity of the
system and signal quality.

References:
[1] S Haykin,., Adaptive Filter Theory. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, 4th Edition, 2007.
[2] Texas Instruments Acoustic Echo Cancellation Algorithm and implementation on the TMS320C8x printed in
U.S.A., 1996
[3] J. Radecki, Z. Zilic, and K. Radecka, Echo cancellation in IPnet works, in Proceedings of the 45 th Midwest
symposium oCircuits and systems, vol. 2, pp. 219-222, Tulsa, Okla, USA, August 2002.
[4] Donald L. Duttweiler, Proportionate Normalized Least-Mean-Squares Adaption in Echo Cancelers IEEE
transaction on Speech and audio processing, vol.-8. No. 5, September-2000.
[5] Tomas Gansler, steven L. Gay, M.Mohan Sondhi, and Jacob Bensesty, Double-Talk Robust Fast Converging
Algorithms for Network Echo Cancellation. IEEE Transaction on Speech and Audio Processing, Vol. 8, NO. 6,
November-2000.
[6] Jacob Benesty and Steven L. Gay, An Improved PNLMS Algorithm IEEE Conference. 2002.
[7] Arian Maleki and Kambiz Nayebi, A new Efficient PNLMS Based algorithm for adaptive Line Echo
Cancellation IEEE Conference 2003.
[8] Guduru Bhanu Chandra and Abhijit Mitra, A Fast Adaptive Echo Canceler With Leaky Proportionate NLMS
Algorithm, IET-UK International Conference on Information and Communication Technology in Electrical
Sciences (ICTES-2007), Dec. 20-22, 2007.
[9] Pradeep Loganathan, Andy W.H. Khong and Patrick A. Naylor, A Sparseness Controlled Proportionate
Algorithm for Acoustic Echo Cancellation 16 th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPOC-2008),
Lausanne, Switzerland, August 25-29, 2008.
[10] Jeronimo Arenas-Garcia and Anibal R. Figueiras-Vidal,Adaptive Combination of Proportionate Filters for sparse
Echo cancellation IEEE Transaction on Audio, Speech and Language Processing Vol. 17, No.-6, August -2009.
[11] Loganathan P., Habets. E.A.P and Naylor P.A. discuss about A proportionate adaptive algorithm with variable
partitioned block length for acoustic echo cancellation. International conference on Acoustic speech and signal
Processing (ICASSP), 2011, ISSN-10-6149.
[12] Jie Yang and Gerald E. Sobelman,A Gradient-Controlled Proportionate Technique for Acoustic Echo
Cancellation, IEEE Conference 2013

6 Jitendra kumar Pathak, Krishna Raj