Patent ID: 8126161

Claim:
An acoustic echo canceller system comprising: a microphone for inputting a voice; an A/D converter for digital converting a signal from the microphone; an information processing apparatus for processing the digital signal from the A/D converter to suppress acoustic echo components; an output interface for transmitting the signal from the information processing apparatus to a network; an input interface for receiving the signal from the network; an D/A converter for analogue converting the signal from the input interface; and a speaker for outputting the signal from the D/A converter as a voice; wherein the microphone is microphone array having a plurality of microphone elements, the A/D converter is a plurality of A/D converters for digital converting a signal by each of the microphone elements, the information processing apparatus includes an acoustic echo canceller adaptation unit for adaptation of an adaptive filter, an acoustic echo canceller unit for removal of acoustic echo components, a band splitting unit for band dividing the digital signal, a phase difference calculation unit for calculating phase difference between voices input to the plurality of microphone elements, based on the signal from the plurality of A/D converters and a frequency sorting unit for judging whether the voice input to the microphone array is voice from the speaker or not, based on phase difference, which the phase difference calculation unit outputs, the band splitting unit band-splits each of the digitally converted signals by each of the microphone elements, the phase difference calculation unit calculates phase difference among the voices input to the plurality of microphone elements, by each of the split bands, the frequency sorting unit judges whether the band splitting signal is a speaker output signal or a talker signal, based on phase difference by each of the bands, that the phase difference calculation unit outputs, the acoustic echo canceller adaptation unit carries out adaptation of the adaptive filter used to suppress mixed components of the voice from the speaker, from the signal of the microphone elements, only for a band judged to be a speaker output signal by the frequency sorting unit, and the acoustic echo canceller unit removes the acoustic echo components from the signal of each of the microphone elements, using the adaptive filter.