Dual-Branch Guidance Encoder for Robust Acoustic Echo Suppression

For efficient real-time speech communication, it is crucial to design a robust acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) system that can effectively mitigate echo signals, which degrade speech quality during conversations. However, many existing AEC algorithms struggle to balance the trade-off between effective echo suppression and preserving the quality of near-end speech across diverse scenarios. To address these challenges, we propose a dual-branch guidance (DBG) encoder within a neural AEC network, specifically designed to enhance the capture of echo components. Inspired by the relationship between input signals, our approach employs a guidance map to generate a latent mask that highlights echo-related regions. By partially computing a separative latent mask in the latent domain of the microphone feature, this method effectively discriminates echo components while accounting for the presence of near-end speech components, ultimately guiding the network in estimating the final mask, which suppresses the echo. Additionally, we introduce the far-end speech processing and state learning modules to generate reliable guidance maps, thereby enhancing adaptability across various scenarios and distortions, including time-variant delays. Experimental results under various environmental distortions demonstrate that the AEC module of our proposed encoder effectively manages trade-offs, achieving state-of-the-art AEC performance while operating in real-time. Samples of our method are available for listening on the demo page.