Review of active noise control techniques with emphasis on sound quality enhancement

The traditional active noise control design aims to attenuate the energy of residual noise, which is indiscriminative in the frequency domain. However, it is necessary to retain residual noise with a specified spectrum to satisfy the requirements of human perception in some applications. In this paper, the evolution of active noise control and sound quality are briefly discussed. This paper emphasizes on the advancement of active noise control method in the past decades in terms of enhancing the sound quality

A Novel Method for Acoustic Noise Cancellation

Over the last several years Acoustic Noise Cancellation (ANC) has been an active area of research and various adaptive techniques have been implemented to achieve a better online acoustic noise cancellation scheme. Here we introduce the various adaptive techniques applied to ANC viz. the LMS algorithm, the Filtered-X LMS algorithm, the Filtered-S LMS algorithm and the Volterra Filtered-X LMS algorithm and try to understand their performance through various simulations. We then take up the problem of cancellation of external acoustic feedback in hearing aid. We provide three different models to achieve the feedback cancellation. These are - the adaptive FIR Filtered-X LMS, the adaptive IIR LMS and the adaptive IIR PSO models for external feedback cancellation. Finally we come up with a comparative study of the performance of these models based on the normalized mean square error minimization provided by each of these feedback cancellation schemes

A computationally efficient frequency-domain filtered-X LMS algorithm for virtual microphone

The computational complexity of the virtual FXLMS algorithm is higher than that of the conventional FXLMS algorithm. The additional complexity comes from computation of three secondary path transfer functions (as opposed to one) and a transfer function between the physical and the virtual microphones. The order of these transfer functions may be very high in practical situations where the acoustic damping is low. The high computational complexity of the virtual FXLMS algorithm imposes issues like high power consumption, making it difficult to implement the algorithm in battery operated ANC devices such as active headsets. In addition, the operating sampling frequency of the algorithm is limited and this in turn restricts its operation to relatively low frequency applications. In this paper, a new virtual FXLMS algorithm is derived by implementing all of the secondary path transfer functions in the frequency domain. The algorithm is simulated using measured transfer functions in a duct with low acoustic damping. Implementation schemes are proposed for the new frequency-domain virtual FXLMS algorithm, citing its advantages for use as an efficient real-time active noise control algorithm. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.Debi Prasad Das, Danielle J. Moreau, Ben S.Cazzolat

Development of Novel Techniques to Study Nonlinear Active Noise Control

Active noise control has been a field of growing interest over the past few decades. The challenges thrown by active noise control have attracted the notice of the scientific community to engage them in intense level of research. Cancellation of acoustic noise electronically in a simple and efficient way is the vital merit of the active noise control system. A detailed study about existing strategies for active noise control has been undertaken in the present work. This study has given an insight regarding various factors influencing performance of modern active noise control systems. The development of new training algorithms and structures for active noise control are active fields of research which are exploiting the benefits of different signal processing and soft- computing techniques. The nonlinearity contributed by environment and various components of active noise control system greatly affects the ultimate performance of an active noise canceller. This fact motivated to pursue the research work in developing novel architectures and algorithms to address the issues of nonlinear active noise control. One of the primary focus of the work is the application of artificial neural network to effectively combat the problem of active noise control. This is because artificial neural networks are inherently nonlinear processors and possesses capabilities of universal approximation and thus are well suited to exhibit high performance when used in nonlinear active noise control. The present work contributed significantly in designing efficient nonlinear active noise canceller based on neural network platform. Novel neural filtered-x least mean square and neural filtered-e least mean square algorithms are proposed for nonlinear active noise control taking into consideration the nonlinear secondary path. Employing Legendre neural network led the development of a set new adaptive algorithms such as Legendre filtered-x least mean square, Legendre vi filtered-e least mean square, Legendre filtered-x recursive least square and fast Legendre filtered-x least mean square algorithms. The proposed algorithms outperformed the existing standard algorithms for nonlinear active noise control in terms of steady state mean square error with reduced computational complexity. Efficient frequency domain implementation of some the proposed algorithms have been undertaken to exploit its benefits. Exhaustive simulation studies carried out have established the efficacy of the proposed architectures and algorithms