A new algorithm for joint blind signal separation and acoustic echo canceling

The problem of joint blind signal separation and acoustic echo cancelling arises in applications such as teleconferencing and voice controlled machinery. Microphones pick up a signal of the desired speaker together with contributions of other speakers and loudspeakers in these applications. The contributions of these loudspeaker signals to the microphone signals need to be cancelled. The remaining signals are then separated so that the individual local speakers are recovered. In this paper an extension of the recently introduced Convolutive Blind Signal Separation algorithm; CoBliSS is presented. This extended algorithm is capable of performing combined blind signal separation and acoustical echo cancelling at a low computational cost. The performance of the extended CoBliSS algorithm is evaluated using audio that is recorded in a real acoustical environment.