1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to personal audio devices such as headphones that include adaptive noise cancellation (ANC), and, more specifically, to architectural features of an ANC system in which leakage from an earspeaker to the reference microphone is modeled.
2. Background of the Invention
Wireless telephones, such as mobile/cellular telephones, cordless telephones, and other consumer audio devices, such as MP3 players, are in widespread use. Performance of such devices with respect to intelligibility can be improved by providing noise canceling using a reference microphone to measure ambient acoustic events and then using signal processing to insert an anti-noise signal into the output of the device to cancel the ambient acoustic events.
When the acoustic path from the transducer to the reference microphone is not highly attenuative, for example when the transducer and reference microphone are included on an earspeaker, or when a telephone-mounted output transducer is not pressed to the user's ear, the ANC system will try to cancel the portion of the playback signal that arrives at the reference microphone.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a personal audio device, including a wireless telephone that provides noise cancellation that is effective and/or does not generate undesirable responses when leakage is present from the output transducer to the reference microphone.
The above stated objectives of providing a personal audio device having effective noise cancellation when leakage is present, is accomplished in a personal audio system, a method of operation, and an integrated circuit.
The personal audio device includes an output transducer for reproducing an audio signal that includes both source audio for playback to a listener, and an anti-noise signal for countering the effects of ambient audio sounds in an acoustic output of the transducer. The personal audio device also includes the integrated circuit to provide adaptive noise-canceling (ANC) functionality. The method is a method of operation of the personal audio system and integrated circuit. A reference microphone is mounted on the device housing to provide a reference microphone signal indicative of the ambient audio sounds. The personal audio system further includes an ANC processing circuit for adaptively generating an anti-noise signal from the reference microphone signal, such that the anti-noise signal causes substantial cancellation of the ambient audio sounds. An adaptive filter can be used to generate the anti-noise signal by filtering the reference microphone signal. The ANC processing circuit further models an acoustic leakage path from the acoustic output of the output transducer to the reference microphone, and removes elements of the acoustic output appearing at the reference microphone signal. The leakage path modeling may be performed by another adaptive filter.
The foregoing and other objectives, features, and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following, more particular, description of the preferred embodiment of the invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.
The present invention encompasses noise canceling techniques and circuits that can be implemented in a personal audio system, such as a wireless telephone and connected earbuds. The personal audio system includes an adaptive noise canceling (ANC) circuit that measures the ambient acoustic environment at the earbuds or other output transducer and generates a signal that is injected in the speaker (or other transducer) output to cancel ambient acoustic events. A reference microphone is provided to measure the ambient acoustic environment, which is used to generate an anti-noise signal provided to the speaker to cancel the ambient audio sounds. A model of a leakage path from the speaker output to the reference microphone input is also implemented by the ANC circuit so that the source audio and /or the anti-noise signal reproduced by the transducer can be removed from the reference microphone signal. The leakage path audio is implemented so that the ANC circuit does not try to adapt to and cancel the source audio and anti-noise signal, or otherwise become disrupted by leakage.
Wireless telephone 10 includes adaptive noise canceling (ANC) circuits and features that inject an anti-noise signal into speaker SPKR to improve intelligibility of the distant speech and other audio reproduced by speaker SPKR. Exemplary circuit 14 within wireless telephone 10 includes an audio CODEC integrated circuit 20 that receives the signals from reference microphone R, near speech microphone NS, and error microphone E and interfaces with other integrated circuits such as an RF integrated circuit 12 containing the wireless telephone transceiver. In other embodiments of the invention, the circuits and techniques disclosed herein may be incorporated in a single integrated circuit that contains control circuits and other functionality for implementing the entirety of the personal audio device, such as an MP3 player-on-a-chip integrated circuit. Alternatively, the ANC circuits may be included within a housing of earbud EB or in a module located along a wired connection between wireless telephone 10 and earbud EB. For the purposes of illustration, the ANC circuits will be described as provided within wireless telephone 10, but the above variations are understandable by a person of ordinary skill in the art and the consequent signals that are required between earbud EB, wireless telephone 10 and a third module, if required, can be easily determined for those variations. A near-speech microphone NS is provided at a housing of wireless telephone 10 to capture near-end speech, which is transmitted from wireless telephone 10 to the other conversation participant(s). Alternatively, near-speech microphone NS may be provided on the outer surface of a housing of earbud EB, or on a boom affixed to earbud EB.
In general, the ANC techniques illustrated herein measure ambient acoustic events (as opposed to the output of speaker SPKR and/or the near-end speech) impinging on reference microphone R, and also measure the same ambient acoustic events impinging on error microphone E. The ANC processing circuits of illustrated wireless telephone 10 adapt an anti-noise signal generated from the output of reference microphone R to have a characteristic that minimizes the amplitude of the ambient acoustic events at error microphone E. Since acoustic path P(z) extends from reference microphone R to error microphone E, the ANC circuits are essentially estimating acoustic path P(z) combined with removing effects of an electro-acoustic path S(z) that represents the response of the audio output circuits of CODEC IC 20 and the acoustic/electric transfer function of speaker SPKR. The estimated response includes the coupling between speaker SPKR and error microphone E in the particular acoustic environment which is affected by the proximity and structure of ear 5 and other physical objects and human head structures that may be in proximity to earbud EB. Leakage, i.e., acoustic coupling, between speaker SPKR and reference microphone R can cause error in the anti-noise signal generated by the ANC circuits within CODEC IC 20. In particular, desired downlink speech and other internal audio intended for reproduction by speaker SPKR can be partially canceled due to the leakage path L(z) between speaker SPKR and reference microphone R. Since audio measured by reference microphone R is considered to be ambient audio that generally should be canceled, leakage path L(z) represents the portion of the downlink speech and other internal audio that is present in the reference microphone signal and causes the above-described erroneous operation. Therefore, the ANC circuits within CODEC IC 20 include leakage-path modeling circuits that compensate for the presence of leakage path L(z). While the illustrated wireless telephone 10 includes a two microphone ANC system with a third near speech microphone NS, a system may be constructed that does not include separate error and reference microphones. Alternatively, when near speech microphone NS is located proximate to speaker SPKR and error microphone E, near-speech microphone NS may be used to perform the function of the reference microphone R. Also, in personal audio devices designed only for audio playback, near speech microphone NS will generally not be included, and the near-speech signal paths in the circuits described in further detail below can be omitted.
Referring now to
Referring now to
In addition to error microphone signal err, the other signal processed along with the output of filter 34B by W coefficient control block 31 includes an inverted amount of the source audio including downlink audio signal ds, internal audio ia, and a portion of near speech signal ns attenuated by a side tone attenuator 37, which is provided from a combiner 36B. The output of combiner 36B is processed by a filter 34A having response SE(z), of which response SECOPY(z) is a copy. By injecting an inverted amount of source audio and sidetone that has been filtered by response SE(z), adaptive filter 32 is prevented from adapting to the relatively large amount of source audio and the sidetone information (along with extra ambient noise information in the sidetone) present in error microphone signal err. By transforming the inverted copy of downlink audio signal ds and internal audio ia with the estimate of the response of path S(z), the source audio and sidetone that is removed from error microphone signal err before processing should match the expected version of downlink audio signal ds and internal audio ia reproduced at error microphone signal err. The source audio and sidetone amounts match because the electrical and acoustical path of S(z) is the path taken by downlink audio signal ds, internal audio ia and sidetone information to arrive at error microphone E. Filter 34B is not an adaptive filter, per se, but has an adjustable response that is tuned to match the response of adaptive filter 34A, so that the response of filter 34B tracks the adapting of adaptive filter 34A.
To implement the above, adaptive filter 34A has coefficients controlled by SE coefficient control block 33. Adaptive filter 34A processes the source audio (ds+ia) and sidetone information, to provide a signal representing the expected source audio delivered to error microphone E. Adaptive filter 34A is thereby adapted to generate a signal from downlink audio signal ds, internal audio is and sidetone information st, that when subtracted from error microphone signal err, forms an error signal e containing the content of error microphone signal err that is not due to source audio (ds+ia) and the sidetone information st. A combiner 36C removes the filtered source audio (ds+ia) and sidetone information from error microphone signal err to generate the above-described error signal e. Similarly, leakage path adaptive filter 38 processes the source audio (ds+ia) and sidetone information, to provide a signal representing the source audio delivered to reference microphone R through leakage path L(z). Leakage path adaptive filter 38 has coefficients controlled by LE coefficient control block 39 that also receives source audio (ds+ia) and the sidetone information and controls leakage path adaptive filter 38 to pass those components of source audio (ds+ia) and the sidetone information appearing in leakage-corrected reference microphone signal ref, so that those components are minimized at the input to adaptive filter 32. Alternatively, the sidetone information may be omitted from the signal introduced into leakage path adaptive filter 38.
Referring now to
While the invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to the preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that the foregoing and other changes in form, and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
This U.S. Patent Application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61/638,602 filed on Apr. 26, 2012.
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
61638602 | Apr 2012 | US |