A system-identification-error-robust method for equalization of multichannel acoustic systems

In hands-free communications, speech received by a microphone is distorted by room reverberation that can reduce the intelligibility of speech. An approach to dereverberation is firstly to estimate the impulse responses of the acoustic channels between the speaker and the microphones and secondly to design a multichannel equalization system based on the estimated impulse responses. Traditional equalization techniques are designed without the consideration of estimation errors that are commonly introduced by the system identification process. In this work, a System-Identification-Error-Robust Equalization Method (SIEREM) for the equalization of multichannel room acoustic systems is presented. Experimental results for dereverberation using SIEREM applied to estimates of single-input multiple-output acoustic systems with known level of estimation errors show that the proposed equalization design significantly outperforms existing methods in the presence of both synthetic and real system identification errors.