948 PROCEEDINGS

IEEE, OF THE VOL. 68, NO. 8, AUGUST 1980

Silencing Echoes on the Telephone Network

MAN MOHAN SONDHI AND DAVID A. BERKLEY

Invited Paper

Absrrucr-Echo of a trrnsmitted signal can ocuu in the telephone

network and is sometimes a disturbing phenomenon. Various methods
of echo control have been used for over 50 years but recent intmduc-
ECHO OF Bs SPEECH
- Ll
__
tion of trvlsmission delays in excess of 300 ms, over satellite circuits,
has resulted in a general reexambtion of suppression methods. Thip

-I { : -
led to development of the echo candler. Aduprive echo cancellation
is accomplished by automaticallysynthesizingareplica of the echo
path response,convolving the incoming signal with the replica andsub-
TALKER
A ti-_ __-
TALKER
B

tmcting the resulting echo estimate from the echo path output. Trans- LZ ECHO OF AS SPEECH
mission is not thereby interruptedin any way and two-way information
transnission proceeds normally with little or no echo. Detailed mathe Fig. 1 . A typical long distance telephone circuit. Each line represents a
maticalformulations for theconvergenceproperties of suchdevices two-wire circuit. The boxes marked N are balancing impedances. In
allow understanding of the effects of various hardware configwtions a local call, the two-wire circuit of one customer is connected diiectly
and input signal properties. Echo cancellers may be applied to the net- t o the two-wire circuitof the other.
work in a number of ways and the development of a VLSI canceller
chip
promisesinexpensiveimplementation of thew applications.
Worldwide tests have shown the effectiveness of candlation methods the normal acoustic coupling which is blocked by covering the
..
for satellitetransmLIslon. ear with the earpiece and makes the telephone circuit seem
alive. At the other extreme, if an echo is delayed by hun-
dreds of milliseconds, it might be objectionable to some
I. INTRODUCTION

w ITH RARE exceptions, all conversations take place in

talkers even if it is 40 dB below the original voice level.
Echoes with delays sufficiently long so as t o require special
the presence of echoes. We hear echoes of our speech treatment, are observed only on long-distance telephone con-
waves when they are reflected by the floor, walls, and nections. In order to indicate the main sources of such echoes,
other neighboring objects. If thetime delay between the and also to introduce various terms that will be used in this
speech and the echo is short, theecho is not noticeable; rather, paper, let us consider a typical long-distance telephone circuit
its effect is perceived as a spectral distortion, or reverberation. illustrated in Fig. 1. Although highly simplified, this diagram
Distinct echoes are noticeable only if the delay exceeds a few will be adequate fora discussion of echoes.
tens of milliseconds. Every telephone set in a given geographical area is connected
Most people actually prefer some amountof reverberation to to a central office by a two-wire line (called the customers
no reverberation at all. Distinct echoes, on the otherhand, are loop) which serves for communication in either direction. The
invariably annoyingandundercertainconditionscan com- use of the same two wires for both transmission and reception
pletely disrupt a conversation. An example of such extreme results in considerable saving of wire as well as of local switch-
conditions is an echo which is as loud as the original speech ing equipment.
and has a delay of about 0.25 s. If forced to listen to such an Two-wire circuits are quite satisfactory for local telephone
echo of their own speech, most people are unable to speak calls which are set up by simply connecting the twocustomers
without stuttering. loops atthe central office. For circuits longer thanabout
Echoes may be generated in telephone circuits too. At any 35 mi, however, a separate path is necessary for each direction
point in the circuit if a signal encounters a mismatch in imped- of transmission. Thereare two reasons for this. First,long
ance, a portion of it gets reflected as an echo. The deleterious circuits require amplification,and amplifiers are one-way
effects of such echoes depend upon their loudness, spectral devices. Second, for reasons of economy, most long-distance
distortion and delay. Several studies have been conducted to calls are multiplexed, i.e., a number of calls use portions of
quantify these effects, and wewillhave occasion to discuss one wide-band transmission channel. Multiplexing requires
some of these studies in Section 11. Here we merely note that, that signals in the two directions be sent over different slots.
generally speaking, the longer the echo is delayed, the more it On a l l calls where such a separation of paths becomes neces-
must be attenuated before it becomes tolerable. At one ex- sary, provision must be made to connect the four-wire circuit
treme, a certain amount of instantaneous echo, called side- to the two-wire circuit. A device that accomplishes this is
tone, is in fact desirable and is deliberately coupled from the called a hybrid (sometimes called a hybrid transformer or a
transmitter to the receiver of thetelephone set. It replaces
To alimited extent,it is possible t o use two-wirerepeatersfor
Manuscript received July 18, 1979;revised March 31, 1980. amplification. In theserepeatersthe two directions are split only
The authors are with the Acoustics Research Department, Bell Lab- locallywithintherepeater.However, it doesnot appear possible to
oratories, Murray Hill, NJ 07974. concatenate such devices without producing instabilities.

0018-9219/80/0800-0948500.75 O 1980 IEEE

SONDHI AND BERKLEY: SILENCING ECHOES ON TELEPHONE
OUT- - I
Fig. 2. Detail of hybrid circuit located at B.
differential transformer). As shown in Fig. 1, one such device
is needed at each end; and, as shown, essentially all the signif-
icant echoes on the telephone network arise at these hybrids.
For the mmt part, themajor echo heard by a talker is the first
reflection at the distant hybrid. We will assume this t o be the
only echo, although on some very poorly terminated circuits it
is possible t o observe multiple echoes separated by time in-
tervals equal to the round-tripdelay.
The reason why it is impractical to make such two-wire t o
four-wire junctions anechoic w l become apparent from the
i low signal levels at the receiver. For such circuits the conven-
following simple considerations (Gould and Helder [ 1 ]).
Fig. 2 shows the details of a hybrid. Basically it is a bridge
circuit; ideally the two transformers are identical and the bal-
ancing impedance is exactly equal to the impedance of the
two-wire circuit at all frequencies. Under such ideal condi-
tions it is seen that any signal originating on the in side of
the four-wire circuit gets coupled to the two-wire circuit, but
produces no response in the out side of the four-wire cir-
cuit. A signal originating in the two-wire circuit couples t o
both paths of the four-wire circuit; however, it has no effect
on the in side because the amplifiers intthat circuit point in
the opposite direction.
If the bridge is not perfectly balanced, the in side is cou-
pled to the out side of the hybrid, thus giving rise to an
echo. Note that because the distributed two-wire circuit is
balanced by a lumped network the echo is not just an atten-
uated, but a filtered, version of the input speech. The only
way to prevent such an echo is to make the balancing imped-
ance identical to the impedance of the two-wire circuit. How-
ever, there are far fewerfour-wire circuits than two-wire
circuits. So a hybrid, which is part of the four-wire circuit,
may be connected t o any one of a large number of different
two-wire circuits terminated in customers loops;and cus-
tomers loops are extremely varied in length, in the type of
wire, in the number of extension phones in use, etc.
Short of replacing all two-wire local networks by four-wire
networks, therefore, there appears t o be no way to avoid echo
at the hybrid. As it does not appear to be economically feasi-
ble to make the local network a four-wire network in the
foreseable future, the best that can be done is t o select a com-
promise balancing impedance. The standard is a 90042 resis-
torin series with a 2-pF capacitor. In the U.S., such an
impedance gives an average attenuation from the input t o out-
put of the hybrid of about 11 dB discounting physical hybrid
losses, with a standard deviation of 3 dB. As wewillsee in
Section 11, this much attenuation is quite inadequate on many
long-distance calls.
949
! I I
I 1
ECHOSUPPRESSOR
Fig. 3. Simplified echo suppressor logic.
Echo is by no means a new phenomenon on the telephone
network, and the importance of dealing with it hasbeen
recognizedsince the veryearlydays of long-distance tele-
phony. On short circuits, echoes can be satisfactorily handled
by a procedure called via net loss. The idea is t o insert a loss,
say L dB, in each direction of transmission. This attenuates
the signalby L dB,while at the same time attenuating the
echo by 2 L dB. Thus the signal-to-echo ratio is improved by
L dB. For circuits exceeding about 2000miin length, this
procedure cannot be used because it results in unacceptably
tional method of combating echo is a devicecalled an echo
suppressor (Clark and Mathes [21). Basically, it consists of a
pair of voice-operated switches whose action may be under-
stood by referring t o Fig. 3. This figure shows the right-hand
portion of Fig. 1 along with one of the switches of the echo
suppressor; the other switch appears in- a symmetric position
at the leftend.
Thepath L2 in Fig. 3 is intended to transmit talker Bs
speech to A. It will also carry any echo of As speechpro-
duced atthe hybrid B. For the most part A and B speak
alternately, and the echo can be prevented from returning to
A by simply breaking the path L Z during the intervals when A
is talking. The speech detector controlling the switch S
achieves this. However, interruption is an important integral
part of a conversation. In fact [ 3 ] , there is a 20-percent prob-
ability forone talker to interrupt the other. To allow such
interruptions, the switch is prevented from opening whenever
a comparator decides that the signal in L2 is mostly Bs speech.
The designof the speech detector and comparator critically
affect the performance of the echo suppressor. In Section 111,
we will discuss some of the considerations on which these
designs are based.
The decisions that control the switches cannot be made with
perfect accuracy and even in the best of echo suppressors some
amount of chopping of the initial portions of the interrupters
speech is unavoidable. Also, echo is not eliminated during in-
terruptions. Nevertheless echo suppressorshavebeenused
successfully for over 50 years on circuits with round-trip delay
up to about 100 ms. This delay is seldom exceeded on ter-
restrial circuits.
A new type of telephone circuit was created in 1965 with
the advent of commercial communications satellites. In order
for a satellite to be synchronous (i.e., stationary relative to the
earth) it must be placed in an orbit roughly 23 000 mi above
the earths surface. A quick calculation shows that the one-
way travel time between the ground stations communicating
with such a satellite must be greater than about 240 ms. In-
 950 PROCEEDINGS
IEEE, OF THE VOL. 6 8 , NO. 8, AUGUST 1980

r----1
cluding the terrestrial portions, therefore, the round-trip delay
in a phone conversation relayed via satellite can be as long as
\I ; a
1 II
600 ms. If, as is quite conceivable, twosatellite relays are used
for a call, the delay can be twice this value.
When a conversationis conducted over a path with such long
delays, the interruption rate increases [ 11 as does the sensi-
tivity to improperoperation of echocontrol devices(see
Section 11). This degrades the performance of echo suppres-
sors onsuch circuits. Sincethe early1960s therefore, a L----J
number of investigators have considered new approaches to ECHO CANCELLER
controlling echo on circuits with long delays [4]. This effort Fig. 4. How an echo canceller might replace a suppressor.
has received further impetus from the launching of the domes-
tic satellite program in 1976.
One of the new ideas that has been proposedis that of selec- We turn now to a discussion of the subjective effects of
tive adaptive attenuation of different frequency components delay and echo.
in the echo with the intent of minimizing mutilation of the
interrupters speech. The most sophisticated of these devices II. EFFECTSOF ECHO AND DELAY
is themultibandcenter clipper, proposed byMitchell and Transmission delay, circuit echo,andecho delay are all
Berkley [ 51, which we will discuss in Section 111-C. parameters of a normal telephone circuit. They produce vary-
The proposal that we believe has the greatest potential is ing effects on telephone users depending on their absolute and
that of echo cancellation as opposed to echo suppression. The relative magnitudes.
idea is illustrated in Fig. 4, which is similar to Fig. 3 with the In general, transmission delay alone is difficult for partici-
suppressor replacedby a canceller. Instead of breaking the pants in a two-way conversation, even in a laboratory situa-
path L2 a synthetic echois generated from As speech and sub- tion, to detect. Even so, experiments have shown that some
tracted from the signal going out on Lz. If the synthetic echo impairment in communication quality does occur even when
is an exact replica of the actual echo no echo is returned to A , only transmissiondelay is present.
y e t the path L2 is available f o r transmitting Bs speech t o A Circuit echo plays a more complex role in circuit quality. As
even during interruptions. mentioned in the introduction, echo returning with negligible
In Section IV, wewill explore this idea in some detail. In delay(i.e.,less than the inverse circuit bandwidth), at levels
particular we will describe an adaptive canceller which is ca- comparable to thosenormally receivedby the listener, are
pable of synthesizing a filter to match the transfer character- called sidetone and are essential to prevent the circuit from
istics of the echo path on which it happens to be operating. soundingdead. Echoes withlongdelays (e.g., greater than
Further, it is capable of tracking variations in the echo path 35 ms) produce annoyance for the talker which generally in-
during the course of a conversation. The descriptions of two creases with increasing echodelay and echolevel.?
such adaptive devices were given in 1966 in two simultaneous Another form of echo degradation occurs when the talkers
publications; one by Sondhi and Presti [6], and the other by speech reaches the listener with two, or more, different delay
Becker andRudin [ 71. These deviceswere built along the times. This listener echo is generally ignored since proper con-
lines suggested by J. L. Kelly and B. F. Logan. The first full trol of talker echo usually controls listener echo as well. How-
exposition of the principles of adaptive echo cancellation was ever, if the listener echo is due to local reflections (e.g., within
given by Sondhi [8]. Since then much work has been done at a central office), with delays less than a few milliseconds, the
Bell Laboratories [ 91 -[ 121, as well as by investigators at many resulting spectral distortion gives the received speech a hollow-
other laboratories, notably at the Australian Post Office[ 131- nesi or coloration. Listener echo of this type is not controlled
[ 151, at COMSAT Laboratories [ 161-[ 181, and at Nippon by conventional echo suppressors but the echocanceller is po-
Electric Company [ 19I , [ 201 . tentially a control technique.
The equations governing the adaptive echo canceller arise in In the following two sections, degradation produced by echo
various applications of system identification and have many and delay, separately and in combination, is examined in more
interesting mathematical properties. We will devote part of detail.
Section IV to these mathematical properties, in particular to
some of the recent work on estimating the rate at which the A . Effects ofTransmission Delay with No Echo
adaptation process converges. Pure transmission delay cannot be detected by one talker.
Finally, in Section IV-Ewewill briefly consider Koll and Rather, its effects areseen in the overall conversational dy-
Weinsteins recentproposal [ 211 to use echo cancellers for namics. An easy way to demonstrate one form of this effect is
data transmission. During the past decade telephonelines have alternate counting by talkers A and B. The rate of the count
been increasingly used for this purpose, and this use is likely to is controlled by the reaction time of each participant plus the
grow in thefuture. At present, high-speed full duplex (Le., total two-way transmission delay.
simultaneoustwo-way)datatransmission is done on wholly This effect occurs in a more natural, and more serious, way
four-wire circuits. A clever use of an adaptive echo canceller when one talker attempts to interrupt the other. If A is talk-
to cancel the echoes generated by a hybrid located at the data
terminal offers the intriguing possibility of using the ordinary Echo delay is equal t o the sum of transmission delays in both direc-
dialed-uplines of the telephone network for high-speed full tions. However, without an auxiliary transmission path, there is n o way
duplexdata transmission. This could be quite desirable to t o tell how delay is divided between directions. In fact, artificial delay
experiments(those not using actual satellitecircuits) are generally
customers whose data transmission needs are not large enough carried out with all delay lumped into one transmission direction for
to warrant leasing specialfour-wire circuits. simplicity and economy.
SONDHI AND BERKLEY: SILENCINGECHOES ON TELEPHONE
ing and B interrupts, A usually stops talking immediately. If B
nowpicks upthe interchange, conversation continues nor-
mally [3],[22]. If B does not react immediately t o the
pause, A will try to continue or even ask B what happened.
Clearly, this delicate structure can beseriously disrupted by
upsetting the timing, leading to rapid and possibly confused
switching of talker and listener. Experiments show that with
zero delay rapid interruption periods occur about twice a min-
ute; they increase to 4 times/min for 600-ms round-trip delay
[ 11. (This is the time delay for satellite connection in both
directions.) Conversational pauses and delays in reaction will
be similarly affected.
It is interesting t o note that neither pure delay norpure
delay plus echo, with or without control, appearto have prac-
tical effects onthe overall length of conversations [221.
(There had been considerable speculation on this point when
satellite circuits were first proposed.)
Another approach [ 221 t o studying pure delay is to see how
long it takes t o detectits presence.When this is donefor
delays of 600 and 1200 ms, after telling laboratory test partici-
pants that delay will be inserted into the conversation at some
point, one sees a modal detection timeof about 1 min.
A direct approach to studying the effects of pure delay is t o
ask for a circuit quality rating by the experimental partici-
pants. This rating is usually done on a five category scale;
excellent, good,fair, poor,and unsatisfactory pared to the totaleffects shown in Table I.
or sometimes, bad. By averaging numerical values assigned
t o the categories (e.g., 5 for excellent, 4 for good, etc.)a mean-
opinion score is obtained. Laboratory experiments show only
insignificant decreases in mean opinion scores andlittle in-
crease in difficulty in using the circuits for delay up to 600 ms
[22], [23]. This implies that if echocontrolwereperfect
satellite and terrestrial circuits would be very similar in qual-
ity. Note that pure delay tests are carried out under simula-
tion conditions since normal telephone connections routed via
satellite circuits will have echo in addition to the desired delay.
The tests have, however, been carried out by a sufficient vari-
ety of methods, around the world, to suggest that they imply
a reasonable projection into field conditions. This conjecture
is partially c o n f i i e d by interview reports on types ofdif-
ficulties encountered on actual circuits t o be discussed later.
Also, the results of recent tests on actual circuits equipped
with prototype echo cancellers agree with these projec-
tions [ 241.
B. Effects of Delayed Unsuppressed Echo
In principle, the effects ofdelay and unsuppressed echo
could be studied on actual telephone circuits. However, such
studies have not been conducted extensively for delays char-
acteristic of satellite communications (i.e., 300 ms or more).
The bulk of experimentation has been on systems equipped
with echo control devices of various designs; results of such
experiments will be discussed in Section 111.
In laboratory experiments, with simulated circuits, the dele-
terious effects of unsuppressed, delayed echo are quite appar-
ent [ 231. Two measures most clearly display the degradation
produced; a decrease in mean-opinion score and an increase in
percent of subjects experiencing difficulty communicating
over the circuit. Table I summarizes the results of experiments
using a spectrally flat echo path with 15-dB return loss (the
average value experienced in the domestic telephone network
at the point in the toll transmission plant where echo suppres-
sors are normally located). The noise levels and losses chosen
95 1
TABLE I
SUBJECTIVE EFFECTOF 15-dB ECHORETURNb S S
Round Trip Decrease in Mean- Percent
Delay (ms) Opinion Score Difficulty
0 0a 0
300 1.3b 30
600 2.0 60
1200 2.0 60
%hosen as referencecondition(assumes no effectof
echo, usual sidetone is much greater).
bestimated
for these experiments differ only slightly from domestic con-
ditions, and the discrepancies may be ignored. The artificiality
of the 1-aboratorysimulation, even given the great care taken to
insure naturalness, probably produces greaterbias in the re-
sults. If the echo is chosen to haveanincreasing frequency
characteristic the degradation tends to increase further at 1200
ms (two-way satellite connection) with over 80 percent of the
subjects reporting difficulty in communicating over the circuit.
It should again be noted that pure delay produced a decrement
of 0.25 or less in mean-opinion score; also the percent of sub-
jects reporting difficulty in this situation remained well under
10 percent [23]. These degradations are quite smallcom-
When echo level is decreased, the mean-opinionscoresin-
crease until a threshold is reached beyond which little change
is seen. This point probably occurs when the echo is inaudible.
It occurs for return loss between 30 dB and 40 dB. The as-
sumption that this represents the ultimate suppression require-
ment is dangerous sincenoise and echo-return-loss spectral
behaviorvaryconsiderably between circuits. As discussed
later, most echo control devices actually reduce echo level by
50 dB or more. For echo cancellers some method, discussed
later, often is used t o remove any residual echo remaining after
cancellation.
111. TRADITIONAL METHODS OF ECHOCONTROL
The subjective implications of long-delayed echoes, dis-
cussed above, have prompted considerable new work on echo
suppressors during the last15 years [25] -[ 281. The major
impact of this effort has been to refine required circuit oper-
ating levels and timing.
In this section, we will discuss operation of the most sophis-
ticated conventional analog echo suppressors currently in use
in the Bell System. For those interested in the history of echo
suppression a rich literature, spanning more than 50 years, is
available [ 221.
Currently [29] domestic terrestrial U.S. telephone trunks
exceeding 1850 airline miles require echo suppressors. An
1850-mi connection averages approximately 35-ms echo delay.
In one current usage the configuration is two echo suppressors,
one at each end of the long distance connection as shown in
Fig. 3. This is called a split echo suppressor. For delay times
close t o the minimum value mentioned above it is also pos-
sible, and considerably more economical, to locate both sup-
pressors at one end of the connection. This is called a full
echo suppressor and is also commonly used. For long delay
circuit (e.g., echo delay more than 70 ms) operation of a full
echo suppressor is degraded by inclusion of the long delay in
the suppressor tail. Forsuchlong circuits only split sup
pressors are used. The discussions in this paper deal explicitly
952 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE,
VOL. 6 8 , NO. 8, AUGUST 1980

with split suppressors but the general principles apply equally r------------1
to both types.
An operating echo suppressor must accomplish one major
goal-removal of perceptible echo with minimum degradation I I I
of desired speech. The desired speech may be from talker A
to B (See Fig. 1) from B to A or simultaneous transmission in
both directions. As in Fig. 3, we w li discuss the operation of
the split echo suppressor at B's end with the understanding
that similar operations also occur at A's end of the transmis-
sion system. Interactions between the echo suppressors at the
two ends will not be considered, except to mention that gross
imbalance in end conditions (e.g., talker volume andloop
losses) can result in difficulties during simultaneous two-way
speech (double talking). Very early suppressors sometimes al- a

I
-

S
lowed lockout conditions wherein neither end could hear the I SUPPRESSION
other for significant periods of time. This rarely occurs with
LOSS
L - - - - - - - - - -J
I
modem properly adjusted systems. Fig. 5. Logical structure of a modem split echo suppressor.

A. Operation with One-way Speech

During one-way speech (single talking), the schematic echo
suppressor of Fig. 3 would be adequate if operation of switch
were fast
enough to avoid echo Of initial speech
sounds. The switch must also operate with sufficient sensitiv-
ity to detect low-level talkers and soft initial consonants.
Thelimiting sensitivity is set by maximum expectednet-
work noise levels which, inthe U.S. network,areabout -37
dBmO (flat over the speech frequency spectrum).' Inpractice,
a standard operation level, or pickup level, of - 3 1 dBmO at
1000 Hz is used. (It has been found that level detectors oper-
ate optimally with flat frequency response over the telephone
band so reference to 1000 Hz wil be omitted henceforth.) In
general, operation of switch S shouldproduce transmission
suppression such that the resulting suppressed signal is below
the prevailing noise level. For typical speech signals 40 dB of
loss is adequate. Current suppressors produce losses in excess
of 50 dB. A pickup or operation time of 5 ms is standard.
When A stops talking, signal at point a will cease following
the transmission delay. However, cessation of signal at b may
be delayed by up to an additional 25 ms. This time is called
the end delay. To avoid echo during the end delay a hangover
time is introduced into the release of S. This time must ex-
ceed the end delay, but the actual value is not crucial as long
as the other talker can gain control of the circuit sufficiently
quickly. Such break-in timing will bediscussed inthenext
section.The Bell System specificationfor hangover time is
200 f 40 ms.
B. Interruption and Two-way Speech
Clearly any hangover time in excess of a few milliseconds
may prevent transmission ofB's speech if B begins talking
shortly after A is heard to stop. A similar problem exists if
both A and B talk simultaneously (double talking) a condition
which occurs a significant fraction of the time, as mentioned
previously. To prevent these degradations, a break-in state is
entered if the signal at b equals or exceeds that at a. With a
return echo loss between b and aof 15 k 4.5 dB, echo will pro-
duce this effect falselyin only a very small (<0.5 percent)
percentage of connections. To understandoperation during
break in, Fig. shows a complete echo suppressor
structure.
When the of Fig. 5 detects break-in speech at
point b, two the happen
1) switch S removes all suppressionfrompath Lz and
2)switch S' introducesa receiveloss, of 6 to 12 dB into
pathL1.
For strong signals this takes place. within less than 10 msof
detection. A veryweak talker B may require as much as 75
ms to regain the circuit afterthe signal from A stops.
The break-in state is maintained by two factors
1) break-in hangover;
2)thehysteresisproduced by the receive loss betweena
and a'.
The break-in hangover must be long enough to bridgeover
periods when talker B drops below A in level. The optimum
hangover is, nominally, 200 ms for 6-dB hysteresis loss used in
the receive circuit.
Three types of degradation may be produced by erroneous
echo suppressor operation
1) echo-either caused by slow initial pick-up or false break
in;
2) clipping-caused by slow entry into the break-in state and
3) chopping-caused by premature release from the break-in
mode producingsuppression of break-in speech.
There is no way in which all occurrences of these errors can be
prevented. However, listenersare rarely conscious of echo
even on long-delay connections. On the other hand, both clip
ping and chopping appear to contribute to considerable per-
ceived speech mutilation on circuits with satellite length time
delays.
Theimplications of theseeffects willbediscussed later,
both in termsof the need for superior echo-reduction methods
and the effect of break-in detection problems on these new
methods.

'dBmO is the signal power in dB relative t o 1 m W at a point in the .' Centerclipping Echo Suppressor
designated as a zero
circuit transmission
level point (OTLP). Although mena conventional suppressor, as described above, is
the transmission level may be widely different at different points in the
network, t o avoidconfusion all dB values inthis paper are givenat a applied to terrestrial circuits with delays U P to 100 ms, the
OTLP. echo the
effects
andof echo suppressor action itself are gen-
SONDHI AND BERKLEY: SILENCINGECHOES ON TELEPHONE
OUT
(a)
CLIPPING
INPUT LEVEL,
0)
Fig. 6 . (a) Instantaneousresponse of one form of centerclipper.
(b) Effect of center-clipping on a speech signal.
erally subjectively undetectable. However, even with the best
modem designs, the combined effects of echo and the echo
suppressor are audible t o customers when round-trip satellite
delays are encountered.
A number of experiments, both laboratory and field tests
using actual satellites or simulated delays, have been carried
out. Depending on the exact methodology and conditions of
the experiments considerable variation in resultshavebeen
obtained. Percent difficulty at 600-ms round trip has ranged
from about 33percent (interviews of actual users of Early-Bird
satellite circuits [ 11) to as much as 58 percent in laboratory
experiments [23]. At 300-ms delay, comparable figures ranged
from 17 percent for real circuits with simulated delay to 42
percent in the laboratory.
The most general conclusions which can be drawn from
these results are the following:
1) the best conventional echo suppressors produce signifi-
cant improvements of transmission quality for all delay
conditions where notable degradation exists without such
suppressors;
2) when delays of 600 ms or longer are encountered the re-
sulting circuit, with conventional echo suppressor, is
significantly worse than a comparable circuit with pure
delay and no source of echo.
Theseresultssuggest a need for improved methods of echo
control, especially on long-delay circuits. The above tests also
indicated that modemconventional echo suppessors did a very
good job removing echo; the major cause of degradation on
long-delay circuits appears, in interview reports, to be cutting,
fading, and other categories primarily indicating speech
mutilation effects.
Thus motivated, numerous ideas for improved echo control
have appeared in the last decade. Few of these methods have
beenextensivelyinvestigated primarily because theymust
complete, on the one side, with the simplicity and (especially
in the most recent digital systems) low cost of conventional
953
, r----l
I
I I
Fig. 7. Simplified CCES.
t t I
t
I
Fig. 8 . CCES using n bandpass Nters (BP), center clippers (CC) and
peak detectors.
echo suppressors and, on the other.side, the remarkable oper-
ating characteristics of the echo canceller.
One unique design, called the center-clipping echo suppres-
sor (CCES),was proposed in1970[SI. Discussion ofthis
method of echo control illustrates some of the flexibility avail-
able to the designer faced with the speech degradation prob-
lems discussed above.
The CCES takes two partially independent routes towards
reducing the effects of echo suppression on speech.
Rather than switching the speech path on and off (or, at
least, inserting large losses) a center clipper affects only por-
tions of a signal which instantaneously fall below a threshold
level p . A signalbelow this level is reduced t o zero while
values above p are passed unchanged, as shown in Fig. 6(a).
Fig. 6(b) shows an example of a center-clipped speech wave.
A simplifieddiagram of a CCES is shown in Fig.7. The
threshold is set so as t o equal or exceed the return echo peak
amplitude. If A alone talks the echo at point b is completely
removed. However, if B breaks in, signals exceeding threshold
p will be heard by A. This is a unique feature of the CCES; no
double-talking decision is required sincebreak-in speech is
automatically transmitted, albeit somewhat distorted by the
operating center clipper. This distortion, although it is par-
tially masked during double talking, leads t o another aspect of
the CCES design, division of the spectrum into subbands.
Previous to the CCES invention several proposals had been
made for comb-fiiter control of echo [30]-[32]. The CCES
also takes advantage of the reduced spectral requirements for
speech during certain periods (e&, whenprimarily one for-
mant is excited)-allowing break in with no distortion-and, in
954 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 68, NO. 8, AUGUST 1980

IMPULSE
APPLIED
AT 0

- -<
< 15 rnsec
5 rn?.ec-
-
Fig. 9 . A typical echo path impulse response observed at point b in Fig.
4 when an impulse is applied at point a.

Fig. 10. A transversal Nter. The boxes represent delays, each of dura-
addition, evenwhen significant clipping is required, removes tion A.
most of the distortion energy. (The only harmonic distortion
produced by a symmetrical center clipper are odd harmonics concerned, although of course it produces the long delay with
so thesecomponents are completely removed bybandpass which A hears the echo.)
Titers whose lower and upper cutoff frequencies differ by less One convenient type of filter which can be made to match
than a factor of three.) Narrow-band filters also minimize the any such echo path by a suitable choice of parameters, is a
effects of intermodulation distortion. A full CCES configura- transversal fiter (i.e., a tapped delay line). As shown in Fig.
tion is shown in Fig. 8. As expected, even the banded con- 10, the output y ( t ) of such a filter is related to its input x ( t )
figuration withouttheoutput, distortion reducing, fiitering by the relation
shows significant improvement over baseband operation.
Optimization of filtering parameters has not been studied N-1
since the rapidly decreasing costs have made the echocanceller y(t)= gnx:(t- nA)
n =o
seem apreferable solution. However,even if theecho can-
celler is eventually fully accepted, it may be that a simplified where g,s are the tap weights. If x ( t ) is band limited to the
CCESwillbeused to remove residual echo in the echo can- frequency range ( I f I < W), and A is chosen to be the corre-
celler systems discussed below [ 161, [ 171. spondingNyquist interval ( A = (2W)-) we obtainaband-
limited filter for which the gns are Nyquist rate samples of the
lV. ECHO CANCELLATION impulse response. Thus N A must be chosen larger than the
The methods of echo control that we have discussed so far longestechopath that needs to be accommodated.Speech
have one featurein common: they tamper with the pathcarry- signals onthetelephonenetwork have little energyabove
ing the echo and therefore, under adverse conditions, multilate about 3600 Hz, so A is conservatively chosen as 125 ps. Thus
the interrupters speech. This is avoided in themethod of 120 taps are required for the typical duration of 15 ms men-
echo control now known as echo cancellation to distinguish it tioned above.
from conventional echosuppression. All echo cancellers that have been built so f a r haveused
The basic idea of echo cancellation is, as mentioned in the transversal filters (with as many as 256 taps) for generating the
introduction, to synthesize a replica of the echo and subtract synthetic echo. However, as we will discuss in Section IV-DS,
it from the returned signal. We will assume that the echo path it is quite feasible, and in some situations advantageous, to use
is linear, and therefore completely specified by its impulse re- other types of adjustable filters.
sponse (or, equivalently its transfer function). All echo can- The simplest way to use such a filter would be as follows:
cellers designed so far make this assumption and accept non- 1) after the call has been established apply a test pulse at point
linearity of the path asan uncorrectable perturbation. (The a; 2) measure the responseat point b; 3)set up the tapweights
only suggestion that has been made so far for handling non- of the transversal filter proportional to the samples of the mea-
linear echopaths [ 101 is to consider the general Volterra suredimpulseresponse; 4) generate thesyntheticechoby
kernel expansion of the echo path. The feasibility and advan- fiitering As speech through this fiiter. Early proposals [33],
tages of this approach have not yet been demonstrated.) [ 341 for echo cancellation did justthis.
Let us refer again to Fig. 4 which illustrates the cancellation Forsuch an open-loopprocedure to work in practice it
of echoes generated by hybrid B. The synthetic echo is gen- would seem necessary to make frequent measurements of the
erated by passing As speech through a filter that matches the echo path during a conversation. This is because a single mea-
transfer function of theechopath.Theechopath is, of surement is not reliable and, more importantly, because the
course, qulte variable dependinguponthedistance tothe echo path is not completely constant for the duration of a
hybrid,the characteristics of the two-wire end circuit, etc. call.Besides obvious step changes such as connection or dis-
However, if an impulse is applied to the point ain Fig. 4, then connection of extensionphonesduringaconversationand
the response at point b will have the generic form shown in transfer of calls via key telephones or private exchanges, there
Fig. 9. There is an initial interval called flat delay for which are slow changes in gain and other fluctuations of the echo
there is no response at b. This flat delay is the round-trip de- path. The transmission of test pulses required for such adjust-
lay in the four-wire circuit between the canceller and hybrid ments is quite undesirable.
and is typically less than10 ms. The ringing afterthe flat These difficulties are avoided in the self-adaptive echo can-
delay can last a further 5 ms or so: (It is important to note celler. The speech itself is used in place of test pulses and a
that the satellite portion of the circuit is to the leftof point a. control loop continuously adapts the transversal filter to take
It is not included in the echo path with which the canceller is care of fluctuations in the echo path.

A . The Self-Adaptive Echo Canceller

These values are only illustrative. The flat delay, in particular, will
dependstrongly on thedecisionsconcerningdeployment.See Sec- We w l begin by considering the analog version of the a d a p
i
tion V. tive echo canceller originally described in [ 81. The basic ideas
SONDHI AND BERKLEY: SILENCING ECHOES ON TELEPHONE 955

ential equations

p-7 I I

In vector notation
d &,
-
dt
=KF(e(t))x(tn
- A), n = 0 , l , - - * , N -1 . (4)

I +-- l I
dhh
4 '- 'I
EPATH
CHO\
I
-
dt
=KF(e)x
h
where hh is a column vector with components h , ( t ) ,and x is a
column vector with components x , = x ( t - nA). (For brevity
we will generally not explicitly show the dependence of quan-
tities on t . )
To heuristically justify this equation as a reasonable adapta-
Fig. 11. Block diagram of an echo canceller. As in Fig. 10, D denotes a tionalgorithm,considerafunction C ( e ) such that F ( e ) =
delay of duration A. dC/de. Then from (2) and (3), iifollows that the gradient of
C with respect to the tap weights h is
carry over to digital realizations although there are some signif- vi c = - -
dC X = - F ( e ) x.
icant differences which we will point out later. de
A block diagram of the adaptive canceller is shown in Fig.
1 1 . The signal x ( t ) is thespeech signal of speaker A. The Thus dhh/dt in ( 5 ) is a vector pointed in the direction in which
signal y ( t ) is the signal at point b of Fig. 4 and is the sum of C ( e ) decreases most rapidly. If C(e) is anyreasonablecost
echo z ( t ) of A's speech and a component n ( t ) . In the case function (e.g., e', I e I, -
* ) then decreasing C decreases I e 1.
when A alone is talking, n ( t ) is just low-level circuit noise. The proof that I e I approaches zero underideal conditions is
During periods of double talking' n ( t ) w i be predominantly
l as follows: let n ( t ) = 0 and let the echo path be exactly repre-
B's speech, which may be large compared to the echo. sentable as a transversal fiiter with fiied tap weights h . Then
The transversal filter generates an estimate z^(t)of the echo, in vector notation
given by
z ( t ) = h'x (7)
N-1 where ' indicates matrix transposition. Likewise
z^(t)= h, ( t )x ( t - nA).
n=o z^(t)= $'x (8)
Thus in these ideal conditions
(As mentioned earlier the tap delay A is typically 125 ps and
the number of taps N may be as large as 256.) e ( t ) = z ( t ) - z^(t)
The control loopuses the error
= (h - $)' X
A '
=rx (9)
where we have defied the misalignment vector r as
to continuously improve the estimate ?(t).
h
Ideally the system should drive itself to the conditione ( t ) = r = h - h. (10)
n ( t ) (not necessarily e ( t ) = 0 because n ( t ) may contain B's
speech which must be left as undistorted as possible). Such Undertheassumption that h is independent of t , dhh/dt =
ideal echocancellation is possible withthissystemonly if - ( d r / d t ) ,so that ( 5 ) becomes
n ( t ) = 0 and z ( t ) is exactly representable as the output of a dr
fixed-tap transversal filter with x ( t ) as its input. Under these - = -KF(r'x) x.
dt
conditions we will show in thenextsectionthattheecho
powerdoeseventually go to zero. Convergence of echo to If we premultiply both sides by 2r' and note that 2r'(dr/dt) =
zero, however, is not an adequate criterion of performance for d / d t (r'r) we get
a system of this sort. What is needed is the convergence of the
impulse response to the response of the echo path. This is a d
- (r'r) = - 2 ~ e ~ ( e ) . (1 2)
much stronger requirement which cannot be satisfied without dt
demanding certain properties of the input signal x ( t ) . We will
consider the convergence of the impulse response, the rate of Suppose nowthat F ( e ) has the same sign as e and that F ( e ) is
convergence as well as performance under nonideal conditions zero only if e is zero. Then (12) shows that r'r is nonincreas-
in Section IV-C. ing. It is strictly decreasingwhenever e # 0, i.e., whenever
there is an uncancelled echo. To show that e eventually goes
B. The Adaptation Algorithm to zero we integrate both sides of ( 1 2 ) between 0 and some
time 7. Thus
Observing that the input of the nth integrator in Fig. 11 is
d & / d t , it is clear that the tap weights satisfy the set of differ-

Here we may define double talking 85 the simultaneous presence ur

the canceller of speech from both speakersA and B.
r'rlt=o - r'rlr=r = 2KeF(e)dt.
I'
As r'r is nonincreasing the left-hand side of (13) is bounded
(13)
956
-
and < rrlo. Thus as 7 -+ the integrand on the right-hand
side mustapproach zero.6 Since the integrand is zeroonly
when e = 0 this proves that the uncancelled echo eventually
goes to zero.
It is important to note that even under these idealized con-
ditions the above argument does nor prove that the misalign-
ment vector r goes to zero. One simple situation in which r
cannot possibly go to zero is if the vector x(t) stays within a
subspace of dimension less than N. Then since dr/dt is in the
direction of x there is no adjustment of r in adirection perpen-
dicular to x.
Thus evenwhen the uncancelled echo becomes identically
zero, equation (11) onlyguarantees that r stops changing.
Bur it could stall a t any magnitude and orientation. It can be
forced to go to zero only by imposing conditionson the input
process x. One necessary and sufficient condition is the mix-
ing condition((21) discussed in Section IV-Cl). Loosely
speaking, this condition guarantees that the vector x does not
stay confined to a subspaceof dimension <N for toolong.
If n ( t ) is not zero, then (9) changes to
e(t) = ri: +n(t) (14)
where n ( t ) is assumed to include the uncancellable echo if
the echo path is not exactly representable by an N-tap trans-
versal fiiter. Proceeding as above we get
dr
- = -KF[rx + n] x (15)
dt
and
d
- rr = -KF(e)
2 (e - n ( t ) ) (16)
dt
in place of (1 1) and (1 2). The behavior of these equations is
much more complicated that that of (1 1)and (12) and will be
discussed in Section IV-C2.However, some qualitative ob-
servations canbe made here. As long as n ( t ) is a low-level
signal compared to e(t), theright-hand side of (15) is still
negative almost all the time except near zerocrossings of e(t).
In this situation the length of r decreases as before. Once e(t)
is.down to the level of n ( t ) , r fluctuates randomly. If x satis-
fies the mixing condition then we wil see in Section IV-C2
that r eventually converges to a sphere aroundthe origin and is
guaranteed to staywithinit.Theradius of that sphere de-
pends on the loopgain K, the noise level, etc.
C. Convergence of Impuke Response
We turn now to questions concerning theconvergence of the
misalignment vector r to zero. As mentioned above this is the
more basic problem even though ostensibly the objective here
is the control of the echo z ( t ) . To appreciate the importance
of this assertion, let us first consider the ideal situation with
n ( t ) = 0 (i.e., z ( t ) = e(t)).
1 ) Convergence under Noiseless Conditions: It is clear in this
casethatifr=Othene(t)=O. Ontheotherhandife(t)=O
we can only conclude that r is perpendicular to x(i.e., rx = 0).
We can conclude nothing about the length of r. In fact for a
given input process x(t), it is possible for the vector r ( t ) to
Pathological situations where, for example, the integrand might a p
proach a series of zero-area spikes, can be ruled out by imposing weak
conditions on the function F [ 8 1.
IEEE, OF THE
PROCEEDINGS VOL. 68, NO. 8, AUGUST 1980
stay perpendicular to x(t) without decreasing in length at all.
This is more or less what happens when the loop gain K is
made large. As shown in [35] when K is large, the vector r
rapidly becomes perpendicular to x(t) thus making e(t) small.
As long as the level of x(t) stays large the control loop keepsr
almost perpendicular to x thus keeping e(t) small. Hence from
(1 1) becomes small even though r may be quite large.
This situation is clearly quite undesirable, because slight de-
partures from the idealized assumptions will lead to significant
errors. Thus even though the objective is to control echo the
formulation of theproblemshould be as an identification
problem, with the emphasis on the rapid convergence of the
misalignment vectorr.
The classical method of estimating convergence rate for
equations such as (12) is the method of averaging, f i t pro-
posed hi the 1940s [36], and often rediscovered since then.
The basic argument for (1 2) is as follows: suppose x is a sta-
tionaryrandom vector, and let us taketheexpectation,or
ensemble average, of both sides of (12). If K is small enough
it may be assumed that r on the right-hand side is statistically
independent of x . With this assumption the expectation can
be calculated for avariety of different functions F and random
processes x. For example, let the components of x be zero
mean Gaussianprocesses and let (i) F ( x ) = x or (ii) F ( x ) =
sgn ( x ) (i.e., F ( x ) = 1 if x 2 0, and - 1 otherwise.) Then if
( ) denotes ensembleaverage we have [ 81,
in case (i) and
+
in case (ii). Here is the correlation matrix of the xis. In
terms of the maximum and minimum eigenvalues A,, and
Amin of Cg it is easy to.derive upper and lower bounds. Thus
with the usual notation,rr = Ir 1 we have
I r l r = o exp(-KAm,t)G Irl G Irlt=o exp(-KA,int) (19)
for case (i) and
for case (ii).
Mostanalysesofconvergence rate, even themoreerudite
ones [ 371 are based on the averaging principle. For the con-
tinuous algorithms being discussed here, the method is valid
[38] only for a time interval of the order O(l/K). For the
time-discretized version (see (29)) it is valid only if successive
input vectorsx are statistically independent.Unfortunately,
for echo cancellation the input is a highly correlated speech
signal. Therefore, the application of the method, particularly
for large K, can lead to quite erroneous conclusions. For ex-
ample, equations(1 9)and (20) imply that in thenoiseless situa-
tion, increasing K always results in faster convergence. This
conclusion is false.
Following Sondhi and Mitra 1351, rigorous bounds on com-
vergence rate valid for all values of K can be derived for inputs
that satisfy a mixing constraintand anaverage powercon-
straint. The mixing condition is satisfied by x@), if positive
numbers a and T exist such thatfor any time-invariant
SONDHI AND BERKLEY: SILENCINGECHOESONTELEPHONE
vector d ,
. rr+T
for all t . A little reflection shows that if x ( t ) satisfies this con-
dition then it cannot stay in a subspace of dimension less than
N for too long. The average power constraint is that a positive
number L exist such that
In addition, let us demand that the function F of Fig. 11 sat-
isfy a sector condition,i.e., Fig. 12. Upper bound for convergence rateas a functionof (normalized)
a l e < eF(e) Q az e
with some positive numbers a l and ( 1 2 . With these definitions
it can be shown that [351
IrlQ lrlt=oeb(T-r).
Thus mixing inputs guarantee that the misalignment vector r
converges exponentially to zero.
The dependence of the exponential decay constant b on the
parameters a,a l , a z , K , T , L is summarized in Fig. 12. Here
the dimensionless quantity bT is plotted against the dimen-
sionless quantity azKTLZ for various values of a third dimen-
sionless quantity ala1 L z . For a given input and a given
function F , the only adjustable design parameter is K . Then
Fig. 12 shows that as K increases the upper bound firstim-
proves and then becomes worse and worse beyond an opti-
mum value of K , with bT becoming proportional to 1/K for
large K .
What is more important is that this behavior of the upper
bound qualitatively reflects the behavior of the actual conver-
gence process. This was shown in [ 3 5 1, for a very general class
of inputs. Also in [35], it was shown that under the assump-
tions that is finite and Ix 1 2 I 2 0, one can derive a lower
bound on Ir I whose qualitative behavior is the same as that of
the upperboundfor large K , for most initial conditions.
Finally, the existence of an optimum loop gain has been ob-
served experimentally (see, e.g., [ 391 ).
2 ) Convergence in the Presence of AdditivePerturbation:
The effects of many different kinds of departurefrom the
ideal conditions assumed in the previous section can be esti-
mated by considering the modified equation
=- KF(rrx)x +u ( t )
obtained from (1 1) by adding the forcing vector u t o the right-
hand side. For this equationit is shown in [ 351 that
where U is such that either Iu I G U , or
$ luld7< u (27)
for all t .
Equation (26) asserts that r eventually is bounded by a
sphere ofradius equal t o the last term. It can therefore be
951
10 12
-
2 4 6 8 14 16 18 i
a KTL~
loop gain for various degrees of mixing. (See Section IV-C.)
(23)
used t o bound the residualmisalignment due t o any pertur-
bation which can be represented by (25). We mention two
(24) exampleswhich are of considerable importance to echo
cancellation.
1)If, contrary tothe assumption so far, the echo path
impulse response h is not Tonstant, then the bound (27) a p
plies with U such that 1 h ( Q U . In this case the bound is
smallestwhen the convergence is fastest. This is reasonable,
for one would expect the tracking ability of the adaptive loop
to be a maximum when its convergence rate is a maximum.
2) If n ( t ) is not zero (due to thepresence of double talking,
due to inadequacy of the echo path model or due to circuit
noise) let S be a bound on its r m s value, i.e.,
Then the bound (27) applies with U = a z K L S .
Note from Fig. 12, that bT is proportional t o K as K + 0,
and to 1/K as K + 00. Thus the bound obtained here becomes
independent of K for small K and increases as K Z for large K .
This quantifies the intuitive notion that faster convergence can
be achieved only at the expense of an increased sensitivity to
noise. (Of course, beyond the optimum value of K , increasing
K reduces the convergence rate and increases the sensitivity t o
noise.)
At first glance the bound appears to be unduly conservative
for K 0. Intuitively, as K + 0 one might expect the residual
-f
(25 1 misalignment also to go to zero. However, this intuitive idea is
based on a tacit assumption that the perturbation n ( t ) is un-
correlated with the input. It is not valid for arbitrary n(t).
For example, if n ( t ) = e x , withsomevector e, then (15)shows
that in the steady state, r = -e. While this is an extreme ex-
ample of little practical interest, it shows that our bound may
not be too bad if n ( t ) is highly correlated with the input;this
can happen for long intervals when n ( t ) consists of another
speech signal, e.g., double talk.
D. Modifications of the Algorithm
Since the publication of the basic algorithm of Section IV-B
in1967, several modifications havebeen proposed. In this
section, we will briefly discuss some of the more interesting
suggestions.
 958
I ) Discrete-TimeVersion of theAlgorithm: The continu-
ous algorithm of (5) can be converted to a discrete-time algo-
rithm in a variety of ways. The simplest (and to our knowledge
the only one tried so far) is to replace the time derivative by a
forward difference. Thus
A A
hm + 1 = hm + KTF(e, X, (29)
where m is the sample number and T, is the sampling interval.
(When the filter is a tapped delay line, T, is chosen equal t o
the tapdelay A, or some integral multiple thereof.)
There is one basic difference between the continuous and
discrete algorithms. In the absence of noise, the continuous
algorithm never increases the length of the misalignment vector
r. In contrast, thediscrete algorithm may increaser (and hence
diverge) forsufficiently large K . Toshowthis, note that if
h is subtracted from both sides of (29) we get
r,+, = r , - KT,F(e,)x,. (30)
Therefore with noise assumed to be zero we get
I r,+l I 2 = I rm I 2 - 2KTs e, F(e,1 + [KTF(e, I X , I 11.
(3 1) where R , is the average of I r, I and u2 is the noise variance.
Then the length of r decreases iff the sum of the last two terms Clearly R , + is minimized for K = K , where
is negative. This is true iff
All the other properties of the continuous algorithm qualita-
tively carry over to the discrete time algorithm [ 4 0 ] .
2) Normalizing the input: If in (4) or (29), F ( - )= (-), then
replacing x by p x has the same effect as changing K to K p 2 . If
F ( - )= sgn (.) the corresponding change is from K to K p . (For
other functions the effect of scaling x is only approximately
duplicated by scaling K . )
Clearly, therefore, the levelof the input signal has a sig-
nificantinfluence on the convergence rate.Forexample, if
F ( - )=
(e) and K issmall enough, then a IO-dB increase (de-
crease) in x produces a IO-fold decrease (increase) in the con-
vergence time constant.
These variations due to changes in signal level canbe avoided
by simply normalizing the loop gain K . Thus, for the above
example, the modified equation
(33)
has convergence properties which are independent ofsignal
level. Most digital implementations (e.g., [ 121, [161) employ
such normalization of the input.
3) Double Talking: When the noise component n ( t ) in ( 1 5)
or (29)is due to double talking, then the residual misalignment
becomes intolerable for any value of K that gives a reasonable
convergence time constant (e.g., 0.5 for a 20dB decay). There-
fore the strategy folloyed [8] is to freeze the estimated im-
pulse response vector h whenever double talking is detected.
This is, of course, identical to setting K = 0 during such in-
tervals. Note that only the adaptive loop is disabled; the com-
munication channel remains open in both directionsatall times.
Ina fully digitnl system, of course, the amplitude is also quantized.
However, we w l not discussamplitude quantization effects in this
i
paper. For some discussion of these effects see [ 12 1.
IEEE, OF THE
PROCEEDINGS VOL. 68, NO. 8, AUGUST 1980
Thus, if the echo path does not change appreciably d h g the
double-talking interval, the echo stays cancelled.
Althoughthere is roomforimprovement, the following
simple double-talk detector [ 121 has been shown to be ade-
quate for the present purpose: if the signal z ( t ) > half the
largest magnitude of x ( t ) over the preceding Z seconds then
declare double talk. The factor half is based on the assump-
tion that the return loss is at least 6 dB, and the time in-
terval Z is chosen to be the largestallowable length of im-
pulse response (including the flat delay).
Instead of limiting the loop gain to one of two values (0
during double talking and K otherwise) Hoge [41 I proposes
an algorithm to vary it continuously with the noise level. His
algorithm is based on thefollowing ideas: let e , = rk x, + n , ,
where the noise samples nm are independent and identically
distributed (i.i.d.) and also independent of the input x . Then
with F ( . ) = (.) the averageof (3 1) over the noise ensemble
gives
(34)
This optimum value can be estimated by assuming the xs to
be iJ.d.,and making somefurther simplifying assumptions.
Finally, the k in (29) is replaced by this estimatedtime-
varying value.
Inspite of all the assumptionson which the algorithm is
based, it isclaimed that laboratory experiments show quite
rapid convergence with speech signals and simulated stationary
echo paths. It remains to be seen whether this time varying
loop gain provides betterperformance in practice thanthe
two-valued loop gain.
4 ) MoreGeneral Cost Functions: The gradient algorithm
of 1) above wasderived as a procedure to minimize a cost
function C which depends onthe instantaneous value of
the error e. It is possible to derive algorithms based on other
cost functions. For instance [ 141 , [ 151 , one might choose the
function
M M
c =c ( r x kc )( e k ) = (36)
k=1 k=1
where M is some arbitrarily chosen integer (e.g., M = N , the
filter length). With c ( e k ) = I ek I, for example this cost func-
Qon may be minimized as before by incrementing the vecto?
h in the direction of the gradient
Thus
Note that the entire block of input vectorsAxk(k = 1, ,M ) - -
is needed to make a single increment in h. In order not to
slow down the convergence, therefore, the same block of
data is used iteratively until someconvergence criterion is met.
SONDHI AND BERKLEY: SILENCINGECHOES ON TELEPHONE 959

XU)
*
I 1 I
& b-----& \ ECHO
PATH

r
I1
I 1
I1
- I1
I ,

+ 1 1

FOREGROUND

Fig. 13. A generalized echo canceller. The boxes w may be linear or non-
linear fdter networks. e ! -A+!
Fig. 15. An echo canceller withtwoecho path models. The back-
groundfilter is adaptedessentially as in Fii. 11. The coefficients
of the foreground tilter are set equal to those of the background
whenever the latteris judged to be better.

tion of thesecomponentsshould mat& the echo. This im-

J
- range of interest, etc. In fact the wjs can evenbe nonlinear
e*
Fig. 14. Canceller with a recursivelike structure [ 4 4 ] . Boxes A and
B are r
tan s
v d filters with coefficient vectors a and b, respectively.
Box B is needed only during double-talking intervals; its coePficients
are those of boxB, frozen at the startof the double-talking interval.
Compared to (29) the algorithm of (38) requires N extra
storage locations for accumulating the gradient, and M extra
locations for storing the additional input samples. It also re-
quiresmorecomplicatedcircuitry and introduces an extra
M samples of delay.
Demytko and Mackechnie [ 141 claim that this added com-
plexity yields the following payoff: 1)the algorithm gives
extremely rapid reduction of e ( t ) ;2) it is able to follow cyclic
variations due to phase roll8 o i u p t o3 Hz; and 3) in labora-
tory tests the disturbance of the h vector due t o double talking
is not /eerceptually .significant, so that there is no need to
freeze h during intervalsof double talking.
The first two claims are quite believable, although it remains
to be convincingly demonstrated that comparable performance
is unattainable by appropriate adjustment of K in the simpler
algorithm of (29). Thethird claim is somewhatsurprising.
Regardlessof the algorithmused, one would expectdouble
talking to produce significant misalignment whenever the con-
vergence is rapid. It would be interesting to see if this claim
survives an extensive field trial.
S) Other Filter Structures: Note that in the theoretical argu-
ments of Sections IV-B and IV-C, we never used the fact that
the components of the vector x ( t ) are delayed versions of the
input signal. All that is required is that some linear combina-
Phase roll is a condition that arises in a carrier system if the modu-
lation and demodulation carrim do not have identical frequencies. It
appears that in some countries [ 151asubstantial number of carrier
links have phase roll more than 0.5 Hz. In the U.S., phase roll does not
appear t o be a problem, at least for voice circuits.
mediately suggests the more general circuit of Fig. 13, in which
the componentsarefiltered versions of x ( t ) . Under the as-
sumption of a linear echo path, any set of fiters with impulse
responses wi(t) w i do, as long as the echo path impulse re-
l
sponses canbe expanded as linear combinations of the w;s
with negligible error. Examples are [ 81, Laguerre filters,a
bank ofpairsof quadrature filters that spans the frequency
transformations of the input-which is the basis of the suggested
extension of the algorithm for nonlinear echo paths [ 101 .
A rather different type of adaptation problem arises if the
echo path is modeled as a recursive filter, Le., one whose out-
put depends not only upon the input signal, but also on the
past output signal. In the time-discrete case the output y, of
such a filteris given by
4 i=p-1
Yn + biYn-i= aixn-i (39)
i=l i=O
or invector notation
Here the coefficient vectors u and b have dimensions p and 4,
respectively, the vector y, has components ( Y n - l , - * *, yn-q)
and x, the components (x,, . *, x , - p + 1. The special case in
which b = 0 reduces to a p-taptransversal filter.
Ideally one would like to generate an estimate
E, = -2;, + u hf
x, (41 1
and adjust the estimated coefficient vectors a^ and b^ to mini-
mize some cost function of the error e = $ - y. Unfortunately,
in this ideal form the problem is, in general, highly nonlinear
and little is known theoretically about the convergence prop-
erties of the iterative procedures available to solve it [421. One
way to linearize the problem (originally due to Kalman [ 4 3 ] )
Pn
is to replace on the right-hand side of (4 1) by y, . Then
A
en Yn - Yn
A I
=(Yn+bYn)-Cfx,
=(b-;)Iy,+(a-C)h,. (42)
The problem of minimizing e: (or any of the aforementioned
 960
A STATION
Fig. 16. Illustrating the placement of an echo canceller for data trans-
mission.
VARIABLE
BULK
TAPS
DELAY VARIABLE
Fig. 17. Two variable transversal fdters separated by a bulk delay equal
t o the round-trip delay in the four-wire circuit. Such a configuration
is necessary when a cancelleris located as in Fig. 16.
criteria) is now formally identical to theproblem for the trans-
versal filter.
Gitlin and Thompson [44] have proposed to use this idea
for echo cancellation with the configura>on shown in Fig. 14.
During double-talking intervals, 6 and b are frozen and 9 is
obtained recursively by means of (41). Note that this adapta-
tion algorithm does not stop automatically when speaker A is
silent (i.e., when x is zero). This condition must also be de-
tected and the adaptationfrozen.
The main drawback of this proposal is that the estimated
recursive filter of (41) is often unstable. However, in simula-
tionexperimentswith q as large as 16,the filter [441 is
claimed to stay stable. If this is substantiated by moreex-
haustive experiments then the proposal has the potential of
significantly reducing the number of adapted coefficients.
The amount of savings that might be realized in practice wil
depend upon the ensemble of echo paths.
6) TwoEcho Path Models: In t,he algorithmsdescribed
above, the most recent estimate of h is used to generate the
synthetic echo. Ochiai e t al. [201 propose an interesting varia-
tion in which two impulse response estimates are generated as
shown in Fig. 15. One, called the background estimate, is
adapted essentially as in (29). The other, called the fore-
ground estimate, is used to synthesize the echo which is sub-
tracted from the signal returned to speaker A. The foreground
estimate is changed only if a decision mechanism indicates that
thebackgroundestimate hasprovided a sufficiently better
cancellation than the foregroundestimatefora sufficiently
longtime. In such case theforeground is set equal to the
background.
The decision algorithm used by Ochiai e t al. is too compli-
cated to describe here. Thereader is referred to[20]for
details.
E. Echo Cancellation for Data Transmission
We close our account of echo cancellation by briefly men-
tioning the recently proposed application of the idea to full
duplex data transmission.
For data transmission over a private line, echo cancellers do
not at present appear to have much of an application. This is
because leasing a four-wire private line is only slightly more
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 68, NO. 8, AUGUST 1980
B
I
wc I
I
M T A SYMBOLS I
I
I
I
4 FILTER O D U L o R b
I
II F ( t 1
I
k I I
I
I
I BASEBAND
I
i _ _ _ _ _ _SIGNAL
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _J
TRANSMITTER
RCVR
y (t)
Fig. 18. Generation of data signals.
expensive than leasing atwo-wire line. However, cancellers
could be quite useful for data transmission over circuits estab-
lished in the usual manner bydialing through the switched
telephone network. For in this situation, full duplex operation
without echo cancellers is possible only by making two calls-
oneforeach direction of transmission. And two calls cost
twice as much as a single call.
Although basically the canceller in this application is similar
to those discussedabove (transversal fdter with tap weights
updated along the gradient of some cost function of the error),
there are several significant differences.
The first difference is in theplacement of the canceller.
Unlike voice echo cancellers which are envisioned as part of
the telephone network, a data echo canceller would be located
at the dafa set as part of the equipment on the customers
premises. To understand why this is necessary, let us examine
Fig. 16. Note that a hybrid is needed at each data set in order
to separatethetransmitand receive directions. Suppose A
transmits data; then the first echo received is that due to the
mismatch at the local hybrid, followed by the ringing in the
two wire circuit between As local hybrid and the hybrid at
As central office. For voice circuits, this ringing, which
merges into the artificially provided sidetone, is quite harm-
less (see Section I). For data transmission, on the other hand,
this early echo is just as damaging as the longer delayed echo
from the mismatch and ringing at Bs hybrid. And it is clear
that the early echo would persist even if the four-wire portion
of the circuit were absent, or completely anechoic. The only
way to deal with this echo is to place the cancellers at the
data sets as shown.
The necessity of placing the canceller at the data set gives
rise to the second major difference between thevoice and data
cancellers. The span of time over which echoes arrive is much
larger for the latter. This is because the longdelayed part of
the echo in this case arrives after the round-trip delay in the
SONDHI
TELEPHONE
ANDON
BERKLEY:
ECHOES
SILENCING 96 1

TRANSMITTED
SYMBOLS
where Tis the intersymbol interval andg(t) is an appropriately
ak - FILTER
designed pulse shape. The passband signal F ( t ) actually trans-
mitted over the line is obtained by modulating a sinusoidal
carrier with f ( t ) . Thus
F ( t ) = f ( t )cos 2nfct + f ( t )sin 2sf,t (44)
RECEIVED
SYMBOLS where 7 is a linearly filtered version of fp). (For example, in
the case of upper sideband modulation f is the negative ofthe
Hilbert transform o f f ) . If fcT is rational (= n 1 Inz ), then [45 1
it is possible to write
F(t)= akghkmodn,(t - kT) (45)
k
(a)
TRANSMITTED
SYMBOLS
-
where gl, . , gn2 are derivable in a straightforward manner
ak from g.
Assuming a linear echo path, the signal y ( t ) in Fig. 18 con-
sists of the received signal plus an echo which is a linear trans-
formation of F ( t ) . A direct application of the echo cancella-
tionprocedure would be to generateasyntheticecho by
RECEIVED
SYMBOLS passing F ( t ) through a transversal filter, and update the filter
tap weights to minimize error. However, this would not take
I 'I I u -
SAMPLER advantage of the specific structureof the signal F ( t ) .
It was Mueller [46] who first pointed out how the structure
of the data signal could be usefully exploited.The idea is
based on the simple observation that f ( t ) , F ( t ) and hence the
TRANSMITTED
echo in y ( t ) are linear combinations of the data symbols 'Ik.
SYMBOLS Therefore, the synthetic echo can be generated directly as a
linear combination of the a i s . The cancellation itself may be
done in baseband or passband.
Three different canceller configurations based on this idea
have been proposed. These are illustrated schematically inFig.
19 (a)-(c), the data set and canceller at station A being shown
in each case.
RECEIVER
Configuration (a) (Mueller [461) is a symbol rate canceller.
NYOUIST Assuming cancellation at baseband, thesynthetic echo is
RATE
SAMPLER generated by the transversal filter T. This syntheticecho is
(c) subtracted from the receivedsignal at baseband and the re-
Fig. 19. Three possible configurations for a data-driven echo canceller. ceiver output sampled at symbol rate is used to update the
In each case the synthetic echo is generated from the data symbols. transversal filter with agradient algorithm. This configura-
(a) Symbol rate cancellation in baseband. (b) Cancellation combined tion requires synchronization of received and transmitted
with adaptive equalization. (c) Nyquist rate cancellation.
sequences.
Configuration (b) (Falconer et nl. [471) is similar to configu-
four-wire circuit; i.e., as much as 600 ms for a satellite circuit. ration (a), except that an adaptive equalizer is inserted before
This problem is dealt with by splitting the transversal filter the point where cancellation occurs. The tap weights of the
into two adjustable transversal filters separated by a bulk delay canceller andequalizerarejointlyupdated by agradient
as shown in Fig. 17. The bulk delay is measured by an inter- algorithm.
rogating pulse during the start-up procedure. In configuration(c) (Weinstein [45]),the cancellation is
Finally, there is a considerable difference in the properties done in the passband at a sampling rate which is greater than
of the signalsused inthetwo applications.Thestatistical Nyquist rate (twice the highest frequency) of the passband.
properties of speech signals are very hard to quantifyex- Although this is much higher than symbol rate this configura-
cept in very broad terms, e.g, their bandwidth, the range of tion has the advantage that synchronizationbetweentrans-
fundamental frequencies that might be encountered, etc. Data mitted and received sequences is not necessary. If the sampling
signals, on the other hand, have much simpler statistical prop- rate is chosen to be an integral multiple I of the symbol rate,
erties and are much more structured. Thus sequences of data then each symbol multiplies I consecutive taps of the trans-
symbols ak (selected from some alphabet, e.g., f l for binary versal filter, once eachduring a symbol interval.
sequences) may quite accurately be assumed to be sequences A discussion of the details of these configurations is beyond
of independent and identically distributed variables. Further, the scope of the present paper.
the transmitted analog signal corresponding to such a sequence
is generated in a precisely defiied manner. To take the most V. CONCLUDINGREMARKS
usual c&e of pulse amplitude modulation, the baseband signal A . Implementation
corresponding to thesequence ak is
All adaptive echo cancellers that have been proposed in the
f(t) = a k g ( t - kT) (43) literature use one form or another of the basic gradient search
k algorithm. And all cancellers that havebeen actuallycon-
962 IEEE,OF THE
PROCEEDINGS VOL. 68, NO. 8 , AUGUST 1980

structed have used the transversal filter with variable gain coef- ties or phase roll, and because double-talk detection would be
ficients as the adaptive structure. more accurate in the absence of flat delay. And of c o m e with
When echo cancellers were first proposed in the mid-1 960s,a the echo cancelled at itspoint of origin, there wouldno longer
filter of this type with say 50 taps, appeared to be prohibitively be any need for echo suppressors.
expensive. The rapid advances in digital circuitry during the On the other hand,if echo cancellers are intended forsatellite
past decadehave dramatically changed thesituation. As we circuits alone, then locating them at thesatellite ground stations
have noted above,several cancellers (e.g.,[ 121 ,[ 161 ,[ 181)have wouldrequire the least number.Thenumber of cancellers
been constructed with hundreds of taps. Recently Duttweiler requiredbecomes progressivelylarger as one locates them
and Chen [48] at Bell Laboratories havedeveloped a single- farther away from the ground stations. The number would be
channelintegrated circuit echo canceller chip. Eachsuch many orders of magnitude larger if the cancellers were to be
VLSI chip has approximately 35 000 gates and is based on the located at the hybrids.
128-tap design described earlier by Duttweiler [ 121. It is not clear which placement will ultimately yield the best
It is to be expected that as digital circuits become even compromise. Here too the picture is changing rapidly. Only
cheaper and faster, more sophisticated systems will be imple- a few years ago the ground station appeared to be the only
mented. We have already mentioned the possibility (Section feasible location. With cancellers available on inexpensive IC
IV-D5) ofusing other, possibly nonlinear, filter structures, chips, it may well become feasible in the future to install a
although it is not yet clear what structure might give the most canceller at each hybrid. It may also befeasible to usecan-
economical design, or most accurate cancellation. As to cellers for eliminating listener echo in digital local offices.
alternative algorithms, a variety of proposals for systemidenti- Further ahead, data echo cancellers similarto the onesdiscussed
fication (see e.g., [49]) have been made in contexts other than in Section IV-Emaybeused at the telephone set in digital
echo cancellation. Forexample, as is well known,the cost subscriber loops [541.
function of (36) with c ( e k ) = e: can be minimized byinverting
a single N X N covariance matrix. The same result can also be C. Field Trials
achieved recursively by fast updating of gain matrices [ 501 . We close our account of echo cancellers by briefly mentioning
It is also possible to estimate the echo path in the frequency some recent studies aimed at evaluating cancellers under nor-
domain. Such procedures [ 5 1 I might become attractive when mal operating conditionsin a telephone network.
inexpensive hardware for fast Fourier transformation becomes A comprehensive seriesof trials of this type was conduc-
readily available. tedduring1973and1974 byCOMSAT Laboratories [ 171
Even for the simple transversal filter adapted by a gradient in collaborationwith seven membercountries (Australia,
algorithm, there is a variety of possible implementations. 1) Brazil, France, Japan, West Germany, U.K., and the U.S.) of
Conventional analogcircuits (e.g, [6]); 2)circuits using charge- the InternationalTelecommunications Satellite Organization
coupled devices (CCD) [521; and 3) digital circuits, which in (INTELSAT). Some of the trials used cancellers designed by
turn maybe implementedwith discrete components [ 121 , COMSAT [ 161 and the others used cancellers with two echo
[ 161, [ 181 or with integrated circuits before, and may be de- pathmodels (see Section IV-D6)designedby the Nippon
signed to operate on a single channel or with circuitry shared Electric Company [ 201. In each case a single wide-band center
with many channels. clipper wasused to eliminate residual echo. The objective
The current trend, of course, is toward digital implementa- evaluationconsisted of monitoringthetimecourse of the
tions. However, the others, specially the CCD implementations estimatedimpulseresponse.The subjective evaluation was
merit further investigation. Oneof the problemswith CCD done by means of interviews withthe customers.
technology is the difficulty of manufacturing multipliers which It is not easy to summarize the findings of these trials be-
are linear in both inputs. It has been shown [ 1 11 , [ 53 1 that cause of the wide variety of circuit conditions (signal, noise,
the linearity requirement can be considerably relaxed. Other andecho levels) and languagesinvolved.Nevertheless the
problems such as charge transfer efficiency, variations in gain general conclusion [ 171was that the echo cancellers . . .
and dc offset, etc., [52], need further attention. On the posi- significantly improvetheperformance of single-hop satellite
tive side, CCD implementation eliminates the need for analog/ circuits when echo is the principal cause of the difficulty. A
digital and digital/analog conversion. This consideration alone large percentage of the terrestrial portions of the circuits used
might make itthe least expensive alternative in situations inthestudy had highloss and/or highnoiselevel. Under-
where echo cancellation is required on single analog channels. standably, on such circuits the echo cancellersyielded only
marginal improvement.
B. Placement More recently (1976 and 19771, Bell Laboratories and Long
The impulse responseto be simulated is clearly of least dura- Lines conducted a series of trials [ 241 to evaluate performance
tion right at the hybrid which gives rise to the echo. (Farther of domestic satellite circuits equipped with echo cancellers or
away the flat delay increases and the active portion of the im- one of two types of echo suppressors-the Western Electric 4A
pulse response spreads by convolution with the responses of or the new digital echo suppressor terminal (EST)designed for
intervening transformers, filters, etc.) From the point of view electronic switching offices. The cancellers used in these trials
of simplicity of design, therefore, the ideal location for a can- were supplied by COMSAT Laboratories. They were adapted
celler is close to the hybrid. Such placement would improve for insertion intothe Bell Systemtelephonenetwork,and
performance because the echo path would have no nonlineari- their double talk detectors were replaced by ones designed at
Bell Laboratories.
The trials were conducted on calls between Pittsburgh and
9Another consequence of suchplacement is worthnoting.Atthe
hybrid, instead of adaptively synthesizing an echo path, it is possible to Atlanta andbetweenPittsburghand San Francisco. As con-
adapt the balancing network. When the network matches the impedance trols, the study included terrestrial circuits (with simple loss
of the two-wirecircuit,thehybridbecomesanechoic. It is not clear on the Pittsburgh-Atlanta circuits, and with 4A echosup-
whether this procedure would be an improvement over the canceller,
but it is an alternative worth some study. pressors on the longer Pittsburgh-San Francisco circuits). The
SONDHI AND BERKLEY: SILENCING ECHOES ON TELEPHONE
trial procedure was quite similar to the one used by COMSAT
Laboratories [ 171 in the international study. The conclusion
was that one-hop satellite circuits equipped with cancellers
performed significantly better than those equipped with echo
suppressors, and almost as well as the terrestrial circuits. An
interesting related finding was that half-hop circuits (i.e.,
circuits in which one direction is via satellite and the other via
a terrestrial circuit) equipped with the EST also performed as
wellas the terrestrial circuits.Presumably theround-trip
delayof 300 ms on such a circuit is short enough for echo
suppressors to work satisfactorily.
DEDICATION
We dedicate this article to thememory of J. L. Kelly, Jr.
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