This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims at developing novel adaptive signal processing techniques to be used in the design of hands-free telecommunication systems. Many of the telecommunication systems like car phones, desktop teleconferencing systems, videoconferencing applications depend heavily on the use of hands-free technology, that is, the ability to communicate without having to continuously hold a device. However, the elimination of the handset introduces some technical difficulties. The acoustic environment in which the hands-free system is placed is in general, much more complex than the line environment that the present technology is capable of handling. Two of the most important artifacts that accompany hands-free systems are acoustic echoes (which are more complicated than the line echoes, due to the complexity of the environment) and noise (which is a common problem in almost all kinds of communication systems, but is even more pronounced for hands-free systems). The techniques that will be developed in Phase I aim at solving the acoustic echo cancellation problem. The adaptive techniques developed are also expected to be applicable, with appropriate modifications, to noise cancellation. The main objective of the Phase I effort is to determine the feasibility of using the wavelet transform in adaptive echo cancellation. Better performance and a reduction in the complexity of the overall system is expected, together with a reduced cost.
