Joint Acoustic Echo Cancellation and Blind Source Extraction Based on Independent Vector Extraction

We describe a joint acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) and blind source extraction (BSE) approach for multi-microphone acoustic frontends. The proposed algorithm blindly estimates AEC and beamforming filters by maximizing the statistical independence of a non-Gaussian source of interest and a stationary Gaussian background modeling interfering signals and residual echo. Double talk-robust and fast-converging parameter updates are derived from a global maximum-likelihood objective function resulting in a computationally efficient Newton-type update rule. Evaluation with simulated acoustic data confirms the benefit of the proposed joint AEC and beamforming filter estimation in comparison to updating both filters individually.