Analysis of Acoustic Feedback/Echo Cancellation in Multiple-Microphone and Single-Loudspeaker Systems Using a Power Transfer Function Method

In this work, we analyze a general multiple-microphone and single-loudspeaker audio processing system, where a multichannel adaptive system is used to cancel the effect of acoustic feedback/echo, and a beamformer processes the feedback/echo canceled signals. We introduce and derive an accurate approximation of a frequency domain measure—the power transfer function—and show how it can be used to predict the convergence rate, system stability bound and the steady-state behavior of the entire cancellation system across frequency and time. We consider three example adaptive algorithms in the cancellation system: the least mean square, normalized least mean square, and the recursive least squares algorithms. Furthermore, we derive expressions to determine the step size parameter in the adaptive algorithms to achieve a desired system behavior, e.g., convergence rate at a specific frequency. Finally, we compare and discuss the performance of all three adaptive algorithms, and we verify the derived expressions through simulation experiments.