Patent ID: 8924337

Claim:
A method for a handheld portable communication device, comprising: performing an echo suppression process on the handheld portable communication device by performing at least the following: estimating a model parameter set comprising at least one noise covariance as a function of at least an estimated or a predicted posterior of at least one unknown state quantity, a far-end signal and an error signal; generating a gain factor in dependence on the at least one noise covariance; using the gain factor to adapt the posterior of the at least one unknown state quantity; estimating an acoustic echo signal using the adapted posterior of the at least one unknown state quantity, wherein the acoustic echo signal comprises an estimate of an acoustic echo caused at least by the far-end signal being played by a loudspeaker and resultant output picked up by a microphone; subtracting the estimated acoustic echo signal from a microphone signal from the microphone to generate an error signal; filtering the error signal to suppress residual linear and nonlinear error caused at least by the acoustic echo according to a weighting function which depends on the error signal, the far-end signal and the adapted posterior of the at least one unknown state quantity; outputting the filtered error signal for transmission to a far-end, in which the handheld portable communication device comprises: a radio receiver which provides the far-end signal from which the microphone signal derives; and a radio transmitter for sending the filtered error signal to a source from which the radio receiver received the far-end signal.