Plymouth Meeting, PA, November 2, 2015 – Adaptive Digital Technologies’ (Adaptive Digital) High Definition Acoustic Echo Canceller (HD AECTM) handles extraordinary echoic challenges and delivers exceptional voice quality.Adaptive Digital’s latest challenge: hospital intercom Nurse Call Systems. Under this most arduous of circumstance, hospital acoustics, Adaptive Digital’s proprietary HD AEC algorithm was able to provide exceptional voice quality while achieving full-duplex performance. Adaptive Digital’s robust HD AEC enabled clear voice communication path between the patient/nursing staff communicator unit and the nurse station console in an acoustically challenging hospital environment.
Adaptive Digital’s HD AEC is well suited to address all of the environmental issues required. HD AEC is a complex algorithm which includes noise reduction (NR), as well as anti-howling, adaptive filtering, nonlinear processing, microphone selection, gain and microphone equalization and double-talk detection. Adaptive Digital uses a proprietary fast converging adaptive filter and non-linear processor to deliver robust double talk performance even in harsh conditions. It is capable of eliminating the acoustic echo in difficult conditions such as unbalanced speech levels, close speaker to mic proximity, background noise, double talk, echoic reflective room surfaces, and echo path changes.
Acoustic echo occurs when a microphone picks up audio signals from a speaker, and sends the signal back to an originating participant. Acoustic echo can be intensified when using a very sensitive microphone and when speaker volume is turned up to a high level. When both endpoints are located in the same room, feedback from one end’s speaker to the other end’s microphone can cause loud feedback. This echo is aggravated by reflective acoustic echo bouncing off hard surfaces walls and/or objects as found in a sterile hospital setting. Additionally, the ambient environmental noise, such as staff chatter, heart and blood pressure monitors, PA and paging call tones, and alerts, and continual background noise, i.e. air filtration systems add to the already complex challenge.
Nurse Call Systems have many components, each with unique acoustic impediments: Nurse Station Console, Nurse Call Box Bed/Bath, Pillow Speaker, and Wireless Nurse Call communicators. The HD AEC intercom solution based on SitaraTM AM335x processors from Texas Instruments (TI) was rigorously tested during development. HD AEC was able to achieve full-duplex performance in all devices under all conditions, even in the case of communication under negative ERL conditions such as Hospital stairwells tend to be.
“TI is pleased to see that Adaptive Digital has used our Sitara processors to solve a problem found in many hospitals across the country,” said Artem Aginskiy, Texas Instruments. “With the HD AEC, hospitals will be able tocommunicate more efficiently and we’re thrilled that the feature-rich Sitara AM3354 processors were able to benefit these medical applications and hope that they continue to be used in these types of applications.”
Adaptive Digital Technologies, Inc.
The full featured HD AEC Solution runs on a Sitara AM3354 processors based on an Arm® Cortex®-A8 32-Bit RISC Processor. The Sitara AM335x processor offers high performance for feature-rich, low power applications with a high degree of functional integration for embedded applications. The ARM architecture supports several operatingsystems, including Linux®, and AndroidTM.
Adaptive Digital offers acoustic design consultation services: Hardware, Enclosure considerations, and microphone to speaker placement.
Adaptive Digital Roadmap HD AEC solution: Currently migrating to TI Sitara AM3356 processors. HD AEC can be ported to other processors. Contact us with your requirements.