The invention relates to an adaptive active noise control mechanism, and more particularly to a method, active noise control circuit, and portable electronic device for adaptively or dynamically performing active noise control operation upon a target zone such as a quiet zone of a user's ear.
Generally speaking, a conventional active noise cancellation scheme is useful to cancel low frequency noise and now is widely used in earphones for users to have better listening/communication experience. However, it usually generates some high frequency noise which can be heard by users (Hiss noise) in the same time. In order to attenuate Hiss noise, the conventional active noise cancellation scheme may adopt a fixed low-pass filter with a flat frequency response to remove the high frequency part of an anti-noise signal which is used for cancel the Hiss noise. Nevertheless, the fixed LPF with flat frequency response introduces additional latency (side effect) to the conventional active noise cancellation system. The latency inevitably degrades the performance of the conventional active noise cancellation system especially when the system is nearly or completely non-causal. In addition, the fixed low-pass filter with a flat frequency response cannot be used for effectively reduce or cancel different types of noises, and thus side effect is also introduced.
Therefore one of the objectives of the invention is to provide an active noise control (ANC) system circuit, method, and corresponding portable electronic device for adaptively or dynamically performing active noise control operation for a target zone, to solve the above-mentioned problems.
According to embodiments of the invention, an ANC system circuit for performing active noise control upon a target zone is disclosed. The ANC system circuit comprises an adaptive filtering circuit and a controlling circuit. The adaptive filtering circuit is configured for receiving at least one microphone signal obtained from at least one microphone. The controlling circuit is coupled to adaptive filtering circuit and configured for dynamically compensating at least one coefficient of the adaptive filtering circuit to adjust a frequency response of the adaptive filtering circuit according to an energy distribution of the at least one microphone signal, so as to make the adaptive filtering circuit receive the at least one microphone signal to generate a resultant anti-noise signal to the target zone based on the dynamically adjusted frequency response.
According to the embodiments, a method for performing active noise control upon a target zone is disclosed. The method comprises: using an adaptive filtering circuit to receive at least one microphone signal obtained from at least one microphone; dynamically compensating at least one coefficient of the adaptive filtering circuit to adjust a frequency response of the adaptive filtering circuit according to an energy distribution of the at least one microphone signal, so as to make the adaptive filtering circuit receive the at least one microphone signal to generate a resultant anti-noise signal to the target zone based on the dynamically adjusted frequency response.
According to the embodiments, a portable electronic device for performing active noise control upon a target zone is disclosed. The portable electronic device comprises at least one microphone, an adaptive filtering circuit, and a controlling circuit. The adaptive filtering circuit is configured for receiving at least one microphone signal obtained from the at least one microphone. The controlling circuit is coupled to adaptive filtering circuit and configured for dynamically compensating at least one coefficient of the adaptive filtering circuit to adjust a frequency response of the adaptive filtering circuit according to an energy distribution of the at least one microphone signal, so as to make the adaptive filtering circuit receive the at least one microphone signal to generate a resultant anti-noise signal to the target zone based on the dynamically adjusted frequency response.
According to the embodiments, by adaptively/dynamically adjusting the frequency response of adaptive filtering circuit based on the detected energy/magnitude distribution to generate the resultant anti-noise signal, the proposed mechanism in the embodiments can effectively reduce out-band noise at the high frequency band for the quiet zone as well as avoid degradation of ANC noise attenuation performance.
These and other objectives of the present invention will no doubt become obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art after reading the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment that is illustrated in the various figures and drawings.
Specifically, the ANC system circuit 215 of the embodiment comprises an adaptive filtering circuit 220 and a controlling circuit 225. Provided that substantially the same result is achieved, the steps of the flowchart shown in
Step 105: Start;
Step 110: Receive the reference microphone signal Srm from the reference microphone 205 by using the adaptive filtering circuit 220;
Step 115: Receive the error microphone signal Sem from the error microphone 210 by using the adaptive filtering circuit 220;
Step 120: Use the controlling circuit 225 to detect the reference microphone signal Srm to obtain an energy/magnitude distribution of the signal Srm;
Step 125: Use the controlling circuit 225 to dynamically compensate at least one coefficient of the adaptive filtering circuit 220 according to the detected energy distribution so as to adaptively adjust the frequency response of adaptive filtering circuit 220;
Step 130: Use the adaptive filtering circuit 220 to receive/process the reference microphone signal Srm and the error microphone signal Sem to generate a resultant anti-noise signal Santi into the target zone based on the dynamically adjusted frequency response in Step 125 so as to reduce or cancel the noise of quiet zone; and
Step 135: End.
A sound frequency band which can be heard by human ears is usually at the frequency range of 20 Hz-20 KHz.
The conventional ANC scheme inevitably adds more noise components to the out-band noise of high frequency band for the quiet zone when suppressing the in-band noise of the low frequency band since the conventional ANC scheme additionally adds more noise to the high frequency band when suppresses more in-band noise. Compared to the conventional ANC scheme, by adaptively/dynamically adjusting the frequency response of adaptive filtering circuit 220 based on the detected energy/magnitude distribution to generate the resultant anti-noise signal Santi, the ANC system circuit 215 and method in the embodiment are able to effectively control or suppress the noise components additionally added by the conventional ANC scheme to the high frequency band for the quiet zone as well as avoid degradation of ANC noise attenuation performance.
In practice, the adaptive filtering circuit 220 comprises an adaptive filter 2201 with an adaptive algorithm and a controllable shaping filter 2202. The adaptive filter 2201 is implemented with the adaptive algorithm such as Filtered-x Least Mean Square (FxLMS-based), Filtered-u Least Mean Square (FuLMS-based), or Normalized Least Mean Squares (NLMS-based) adaptation algorithms (but not limited), and so on. The adaptive filter 2201 is arranged for generating a preliminary anti-noise signal Santi′ based on the adaptive algorithm according to the reference microphone signal Srm and the error microphone signal Sem. The controllable shaping filter 2202 is coupled to the adaptive filter 2201 and configured for receiving the preliminary anti-noise signal Santi′ to generate the resultant anti-noise signal Santi to the target zone. Since the whole frequency response of adaptive filtering circuit 220 is composed of frequency responses of adaptive filter 2201 and controllable shaping filter 2202, dynamically adjusting the frequency response of controllable shaping filter 2202 can equivalently adjust or compensate the frequency response of adaptive filtering circuit 220. In this embodiment, the whole frequency response of adaptive filtering circuit 220 is dynamically adjusted by adjusting the frequency response of controllable shaping filter 2202. That is, the frequency response of adaptive filter 2201 can be configured as a fixed response (but not limited); the controlling circuit 225 in other embodiments may be arranged to dynamically adjust the frequency response of adaptive filter 2201. The frequency response of controllable shaping filter 2202 is adjustable/controllable and is dynamically determined/controlled by the controlling circuit 225 according to the energy/magnitude distribution of the reference microphone signal. In practice, the controlling circuit 225 can dynamically compensate at least one coefficient of controllable shaping filter 2202 based on the energy distribution of the reference microphone signal, to adaptively adjust the frequency response of controllable shaping filter 2202.
In practice, the controlling circuit 225 comprises a detecting circuit 2251 and a processing circuit 2252. The detecting circuit 2251 is configured for detecting energy of the reference microphone signal Srm to obtain the energy distribution of the reference microphone signal Srm. The processing circuit 2252 such as a DSP circuit is coupled to detecting circuit 2251 and is configured for identifying the detected energy distribution to determine/select a noise type among a plurality of noise types and for dynamically compensating the at least one coefficient of the controllable shaping filter 2202 based on the selected noise type.
Specifically, in this embodiment, the detecting circuit 22512251 may be implemented to comprise two specific filters including a first specific filter with a first pass-band to detect energy of the in-band noise and a second specific filter with a second pass-band to detect energy of the out-band noise. For example, the first specific filter may be a low-pass filter, and the second specific filter may be a band-pass filter (but not limited). In other embodiments, the detecting circuit 2251 may be merely designed to measure the energy of ambient noise and may exclude the low-pass filter or band-pass filter.
The controllable shaping filter 2202 can be designed or configured to be with multiple kinds of frequency responses. Assuming that the controllable shaping filter 2202 is with two kinds of frequency responses, for compensating at least one coefficient of the controllable shaping filter 2202, the processing circuit 2252 is arranged for compensating at least one coefficient of the controllable shaping filter as a first coefficient corresponding to a first frequency response when energy of a high frequency signal component of the energy distribution is greater than energy of a low frequency signal component of the energy distribution (i.e. the magnitude of out-band noise is greater than that of in-band noise). Also, the processing circuit 2252 is arranged for compensating the at least one coefficient of the controllable shaping filter as a second coefficient corresponding to a second frequency response when the energy of the high frequency signal component is smaller than the energy of the low frequency signal component (i.e. the magnitude of out-band noise is smaller than that of in-band noise). That is, the processing circuit 2252 adaptively adjust the frequency response of controllable shaping filter 2202 according to the currently received noise magnitude (in-band noise magnitude and out-band noise magnitude).
Alternatively, in a second example of
Further, in practice, the processing circuit 2252 can be configured to calculate an energy ratio of the energy of low frequency signal components divided by that of the high frequency signal components. If the energy ratio is greater than one (but not limited), the processing circuit 2252 is arranged to determine or control the controllable shaping filter 2202 as a low-pass filter having the frequency response slope which drops more slowly. Alternatively, if the energy ratio is smaller than one, the processing circuit 2252 is arranged to determine or control the controllable shaping filter 2202 as a low-pass filter having the frequency response slope which drops more rapidly.
Further, in another embodiment, the controllable shaping filter 2202 may be designed to comprise two kinds of frequency responses corresponding to other filters with similar functionalities such as a low-pass filter and a band-stop filter (or a notch filter). The band-stop filter can be used to attenuate energy for a certain frequency. If the energy of the low frequency components of reference microphone signal Srm is smaller than that of the high frequency components, the processing circuit 2252 is arranged to control or compensate the coefficient(s) of controllable shaping filter 2202 as coefficient(s) corresponding to a frequency response of the band-stop filter, so that the controllable shaping filter 2202 is equivalent to the band-stop filter which can be used for passing the low frequency signal components in the preliminary anti-noise signal Santi′ and attenuating or rejecting the high frequency signal components in the preliminary anti-noise signal Santi′, to generate the resultant anti-noise signal Santi to the quiet zone. This effectively avoids degradation of the ANC performance even though the user may hear little noise caused due to the attenuated high frequency components.
In addition, if the processing circuit 2252 determines that the energy of high frequency components of reference microphone signal Srm is smaller than that of low frequency components, the processing circuit 2252 is arranged to control or compensate the coefficient(s) of controllable shaping filter 2202 as coefficient(s) corresponding to a frequency response of the low-pass filter, so that the controllable shaping filter 2202 is equivalent to the low-pass filter which can be used for passing the low frequency signal components in the preliminary anti-noise signal Santi′ and passing the high frequency signal components in the preliminary anti-noise signal Santi′ with less attenuation, to generate the resultant anti-noise signal Santi to the quiet zone. This can effectively cancel or reduce noise of the quiet zone and significantly improve the ANC performance.
It should be noted that the controllable shaping filter 2202 has at least two different frequency responses corresponding to different filters and can use a corresponding frequency response to process the preliminary anti-noise signal Santi′ to generate the resultant anti-noise signal Santi based on the control of the processing circuit 2252.
Further, in a second embodiment, the ANC system circuit can be arranged for adaptively or dynamically performing ANC operation upon the quiet zone by referring to the energy distribution of the error microphone signal without referencing the reference microphone signal.
Step 605: Start;
Step 610: Receive the error microphone signal Sem from the error microphone 210 by using the adaptive filtering circuit 220;
Step 615: Use the controlling circuit 225 to detect the error microphone signal Sem to obtain an energy/magnitude distribution of the signal Sem;
Step 620: Use the controlling circuit 225 to dynamically compensate at least one coefficient of the adaptive filtering circuit 220 according to the detected energy distribution so as to adaptively adjust the frequency response of adaptive filtering circuit 220;
Step 625: Use the adaptive filtering circuit 220 to receive/process the error microphone signal Sem to generate the resultant anti-noise signal Santi into the target zone based on the dynamically adjusted frequency response in Step 620 so as to reduce or cancel the noise of quiet zone; and
Step 630: End.
Compared to portable electronic device 200, the portable electronic device 500 may be designed to exclude the reference microphone or may include the reference microphone but is designed to not to reference the reference microphone signal. The portable electronic device 500 such as a mobile phone or smart phone, and comprises the error microphone 210 and the ANC system circuit 215. The error microphone 210 is configured in the target zone and used for receiving or detecting inside noise (e.g. in-ear noise) to generate an error microphone signal Sem. For example, if the device 500 is a smart phone, the error microphone 210 and quiet zone may be configured together with a speaker 216 of the smart phone; however, this is not meant to be a limitation. In the second embodiment, the adaptive filtering circuit 220 is arranged for using the adaptive filter 2201 to receive the error microphone signal Sem from the error microphone 210 to generate the preliminary anti-noise signal Santi′ and using the controllable shaping filter 2202 to receive/process the preliminary anti-noise signal Santi′ to generate the resultant anti-noise signal Santi to the quiet zone. The controlling circuit 225 is arranged for using the detecting circuit 2251 to detect the error microphone signal Sem to obtain an energy/magnitude distribution of the signal Sem and using the processing circuit 2252 to dynamically compensate at least one coefficient of controllable shaping filter 2202 according to the detected energy distribution so as to adaptively adjust the frequency response of adaptive filtering circuit 220. Thus, the adaptive filtering circuit 220 is arranged to receive/process the error microphone signal Sem to generate the resultant anti-noise signal Santi into the target zone based on the dynamically adjusted frequency response so as to reduce or cancel the noise of quiet zone.
According to the first and second embodiments mentioned above, no matter whether an ANC system circuit is implemented with feed-forward, feedback, and/or hybrid circuit structures, by adaptively/dynamically adjusting the frequency response of adaptive filtering circuit based on the detected energy/magnitude distribution of microphone signal(s) to generate the resultant anti-noise signal Santi, the ANC system circuits in the embodiments are able to effectively reduce out-band noise at the high frequency band for the quiet zone as well as avoid degradation of ANC noise attenuation performance.
Those skilled in the art will readily observe that numerous modifications and alterations of the device and method may be made while retaining the teachings of the invention. Accordingly, the above disclosure should be construed as limited only by the metes and bounds of the appended claims.
This application claims priority of U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 62/458,588 filed on Feb. 14, 2017, which is entirely incorporated herein by reference.
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