On Acoustic Feedback Cancellation Using Probe Noise in Multiple-Microphone and Single-Loudspeaker Systems

A probe noise signal can be used in an acoustic feedback cancellation system to prevent biased adaptive estimation of acoustic feedback paths. However, practical experiences and simulation results indicate that when-ever a low-level and inaudible probe noise signal is used, the convergence rate of the adaptive estimation is significantly decreased when keeping the steady-state error unchanged. The goal of this work is to derive analytic expressions for the system behavior such as convergence rate and steady-state error for a multiple-microphone and single-loudspeaker audio system, where the acoustic feedback cancellation is carried out using a probe noise signal. The derived results show how different system parameters and signal properties affect the cancellation performance, and the results explain theoretically the decreased convergence rate. Understanding this is important for making further improvements in the existing probe noise approach.