Silencing echoes on the telephone network

Echo of a trasmitted signal can occur in the telephone network and is sometimes a disturbing phenomenon. Various methods of echo control have been used for over 50 years but recent introduction of transmission delays in excess of 300 ms, over satellite circuits, has resulted in a general reexamination of suppression methods. This led to development of the echo canceller. Adaptive echo cancellation is accomplished by automatically synthesizing a replica of the echo path response, convolving the incoming signal with the replica and subtracting the resulting echo estimate from the echo path output. Transmission is not thereby interrupted in any way and two-way information transmission proceeds normally with little or no echo. Detailed mathematical formulations for the convergence properties of such devices allow understanding of the effects of various hardware configurations and input signal properties. Echo cancellers may be applied to the network in a number of ways and the development of a VLSI canceller chip promises inexpensive implementation of these applications. Worldwide tests have shown the effectiveness of cancellation methods for satellite transmission.