Advanced Adaptive Algorithms for Double Talk Detection in Echo Cancellers: A Technical Review

An acoustic echo cancellation system is one of the most important breakthrough in the field of adaptive systems. Today acoustic echo cancellers (AEC) are an integral part of full duplex hands-free voice communication. Conventional echo cancellers use a linear model to represent the echo path. However many consumer devices include loud-speakers and power amplifiers that generate non-linear distortions.Non-linearity occurs due to the use of low cost electronic loud speakers, microphones and poorly designed enclosures in an AEC system. Non-linearity causes vibration and harmonic distortion and also degrades the speech quality. Double talk detector (DTD) is a key component of an AEC. A DTD is used to sense when the far end signal is corrupted by the near end speech. The DTD freezes the adaptation of model filter to prevent the divergence of the adaptive filter. Various authors have proposed different algorithms for double talk detection. Some of the most popular algorithms are Geigel algorithm, cross-correlation based DTD, normalized cross correlation based DTD, variable impulse response DTD etc. In this paper several double talk detection algorithms in a non-linear platform of an AEC has been discussed.