A holistic approach to the design of integrated and distributed digital signal processing algorithms for audio and speech communication devices

Present-day audio and speech communication devices have advanced digital signal processing (DSP) functions on board such as signal enhancement, acoustic echo and feedback cancellation, dereverberation, active noise control, etc. Nevertheless, improving the performance of these individual DSP functions as well as their general robustness in real-life scenarios is still a topic of on-going research. Currently, there is a growing interest in the potential for improvement through device cooperation and distributed signal processing, by exploiting ad-hoc wireless connectivity in the Internet-of-Things. However, the individual DSP functions are traditionally developed and analysed in isolation, so that their interaction -even counteraction- is rarely taken into account, thereby compounding the general robustness problem. To address this problem, a generic holistic approach will be developed, integrating the individual DSP functions in a common acoustic control problem statement and solution strategy, from which suitable integrated and distributed algorithms can then be designed. Alongside this generic approach, two representative and relevant use cases will be developed, focusing on i) hearing instruments technology and ii) public address and interactive virtual acoustics technology, where eventually the performance of the integrated and distributed algorithms can be compared with the current state-of-the-art.

Keywords:Digital Signal Processing, Audio Signal Processing, Speech Communication Systems, Interactive Virtual Acoustics

Disciplines:Audio and speech computing, Audio and speech processing, Signal processing