Active noise control and secondary path modeling algorithms for earphones

This paper presents the development of active noise control (ANC) for earphones, which uses natural sound for estimating the secondary path model instead of extra random noise. Real-time experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the developed ANC earphones using the microphone inside KEMAR's ear. Experimental results show the developed light-weight ANC earphones achieve higher noise reduction in wider frequency range than the commercial ANC headphones and earphone, and natural sound can be used to replace annoying white noise as an excitation signal for adaptive identification of secondary path required by ANC system.