Noise and Feedback Suppression for In-car Communication Systems

Abstract:
In cars, the communication between different seat rows proves to be difficult due to road noise and the acoustic situation (seating positions and viewpoints). Drivers typically tend to turn their heads when talking to rear seat passengers, unconsciously challenging their and the passengers’ safety. In this paper, we address the enhancement of the speech understandability, particularly for the scenario where driver or co-driver talk to rear seat passengers. We propose an in-car communication system providing an amplification to the acoustic propagation from front to rear taking into account the acoustic conditions in a car. In particular, we present a spectral subtraction approach for noise and feedback suppression, frequency shift and feedback cancelation modules in such systems.