A handsfree communication apparatus utilizing a plurality of microphones to allow simultaneous communication by a plurality of persons. The plurality of microphones are separately provided apart from one another. An amplifier section (or a noise canceller) includes a plurality of operational amplifiers for signal amplification individually corresponding to the plurality of microphones, and differential amplifier circuit for executing a differential amplification. Through the differential amplification, simultaneously input noise components are canceled out and reduced, and at the same time speech components are extracted.
A method of canceling noise in analog circuits is described along with noise cancellation circuits. Analog circuits are sensitive to noise. Especially in mixed signal environments where digital circuits and analog circuits are combined, the noise generated by relatively noisy digital circuits often cause the analog circuits to produce incorrect output signals. Instead of shielding or separating the susceptible analog circuits from noisy digital circuits, additional circuitry is added where one of the added circuits, denoted as the noise separator circuit, produce only the noise component of the output signal, the first output, of the analog circuit adversely affected by the noise. Then, another circuit is used to subtract the noise from the first output, thereby producing a noise-free output signal. Alternatively, the noise separator circuit can be made to produce the inverse of the first output, including the inverse of the noise. Then, the first output and the inverse output can be added and halved to produce the desired, noise-free output.
A portable communication device for conference calls, comprising at least first and second speech encoder paths with first and second inputs for connection to first and second recording devices, respectively, and at least one output connected to signal processor means for receiving and processing first and second electronic signals from said recording devices via said first and second speech encoder paths for transmission to a transmitter/receiver operatively connected to said signal processor means, wherein said apparatus is adpated to receive said first and second electronic signals simultaneously even if the signals are different, and said apparatus comprises a summator adapted to sum said first and second electronic signals into a sum signal for transmission to said transmitter/receiver.
A method of recovering source signals from an equal number of mixed signals including components of the source signals. Channel one and two mixed signals are multiplied by channel one and two adaptive weights to produce channel one and two product signals, respectively. A channel one filtered feedback signal is generated from a channel two approximation signal and a channel two filtered feedback signal is generated from a channel one approximation signal. The channel one filtered feedback signal is added to the channel one product signal to produce the channel one approximation signal and the channel two filtered feedback signal is added to the channel two product signal to produce the channel two approximation signal. A nonlinear function is applied to the approximation signals to produce output signals. The adaptive weights and the filtered feedback signals are adjusted to maximize entropy of the output signals.
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for adjusting the gain of an amplifier circuit. A gain control circuit compares the output of the amplifier with a reference voltage and adjusts a variable resistor, thereby altering the gain of the amplifier.
A analog-to-digital conversion apparatus and method for mobile communication devices are disclosed by the present invention. Because the conventional CMOS process does not allow for high order anti-aliasing circuits to be fabricated with digital circuits on the same chip, a new apparatus had to be developed to use low order anti-aliasing filters for the analog-to-digital conversion. The apparatus of the present invention includes a low order anti-aliasing circuit, a delta-sigma converter, and post-conversion filters. The post conversion filters include a decimation circuit, a droop correction filter, and an offset adjust circuit. In this implementation, a low order analog anti-aliasing filter can be used along with a delta-sigma converter and post-conversion filters to eliminate the need for high order analog anti-aliasing filters. Another aspect of the present invention is the duplication of the circuits to process the incoming signals. The duplicate circuit is fed a null signal to process the noise only. Then, the processed noise is subtracted from the processed signals, which contain the information plus noise, to obtain a noise free processed signal.