Patent ID: 7773743

Claim:
A method of digital signal processing at a near end of a two-way communication system for reducing echo for a remote end, the near end having a speaker for playing audio from the remote end and an array of microphones to capture near end speech, the method comprising: applying an acoustic echo cancellation process for canceling remote-end echo on each of a plurality of microphone channels from the microphone array; applying a residual echo suppression process for further reducing remote-end echo, wherein said applying the residual echo suppression process comprises separately applying the residual echo suppression process following the acoustic echo cancellation process on each microphone channel; and performing a sound source localization process and a microphone array process to produce a source-localized speech channel based on the microphone channels, wherein said performing the sound source localization process and the microphone array process comprises: performing the sound source localization process based on outputs of the acoustic echo cancellation process prior to the residual echo suppression process on the microphone channels to determine a direction of arrival estimate; and performing the microphone array process on the outputs of the residual echo suppression process on the microphone channels according to the direction of arrival estimate to produce a source-localized speech channel for transmission to the remote end.