Quality evaluation of novel DTD algorithm based on audio watermarking

Abstract

Echo cancellers typically employ a doubletalk detection (DTD) algorithm in order to keep the adaptive filter from diverging in the presence of near-end speech signal or other disruptive sounds in the microphone signal. A novel doubletalk detection algorithm based on techniques similar to those used for audio signal watermarking was introduced by the authors. The application of the described DTD algorithm within acoustic echo cancellation system is presented. The comparison of the proposed algorithm with very common, but simple Geigel algorithm and representing current state-of-the-art Normalized Cross-Correlation algorithms is performed. Both objective (ROC) and subjective (listening tests) performance evaluation methods are employed to obtain exhaustive evaluation results in simulated real-world conditions. The evaluation results are presented and their relevance is discussed. An issue of algorithms' computational complexity is emphasized and conclusions are drawn.