A Sigmoid Function Based Feedback Filtered-X-LMS

Algorithm with Improved Offline Modelling

Shibalik Mohapatra
Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department,
BITS Pilani,
Rajasthan, India
shibalik.mohapatra4@gmail.com

Abstract-As
improvement

the

on

world

the

is

current

growing

technology

Asutosh Kar
Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department,
BITS Pilani (Hyd.),
Telangana, India-500078
asu131@gmail.com

technological
is

given

city,

immense

importance. This involves the improvement in the clarity of the

signals used in an instrument; let it be in the form of text, audio

noise signal present with the original signal but is not at all
correlated to the desired signal component of the input
signal s.

or video. In short, the suppression of noise in any form is critical.

Active Noise Control (ANC) has developed especially after the

System Output

introduction of more powerful DSP chips in the 1980s and has

become the most popular noise cancelling technique. Several
structures such as the lattice ANC, feedforward ANC, feedback

Primary input

ANC and the Volterra filter based ANC have been developed.
Based on the application and the type of noise signal, several
Filter

algorithms have also been developed like the Least Mean Square
(LMS),

Normalized

Least

Mean

Square

(NLMS)

and

Output y

the

wen)

Filtered-x- LMS (FXLMS) algorithm. In this paper, an improved

sigmoid function based feedback FXLMS algorithm which has an
improved offline modelling has been developed. A comparative

Reference 1"fJui

study of the algorithm has been carried out with the conventional

Error

FXLMS algorithm. From the graphs obtained an analysis of the

proposed algorithm has also been done which has an improved
speed convergence over the conventional FXLMS algorithm.
Keywords-Active
feedback

noise

Noise

cancellation;

Cancellation;

Sigmoid

Signal-to-Noise;

function;

Filtered-x-Least

Mean Square

I.

I NTRODUCTION

s + no

is the original signal with some noise given in the desired

input segment of the adaptive system. A secondary noise is
generated either using a secondary microphone or estimated
using some technique. This is strongly correlated to the

978-1-4799-7961-5/15/$31.00 2015

IEEE

The system output is found in the generally called error

output of the adaptive system. This is given by:

Noise in a signal processing event can occur at any stage,

like signal generation, transfer of signal and storing. Noise can
be divided to narrowband or wideband noise based on it
frequency composition. Traditional methods of noise
cancellation included passive techniques rather than today's
active techniques[l]. These involved enclosures and barriers.
Although over a large spectral band they effectively could
reduce noise they were failed to effectively reduce low
frequency noise signals. They were also bulky which made
large scale transportation undesirable apart from being
expensive. Active Noise Control (ANC) dealt with all these
problems and has emerged as the most popular and effective
technique for noise cancellation[2]. The problem formulation
of ANC has been given in fig. I. ANC works on the principle
of destructive interference of signals . The input signal

Fig.l. Active Noise Control (A NC) setup model

s+no

(1)

As the filter output would be highly correlated with the input

noise only and not the primary desired input, the optimal
output would be the desired signal s.
ANC systems can be categorized as feedforward ANC and
feedback ANC systems. In feedforward ANC, a second
microphone is used for the correlated secondary noise
generation. This is determined before is crosses the secondary
source signal. Feedback ANC utilizes an estimation technique
for the secondary noise signal. Instead of using an external
second microphone, it estimates the reference signal using the
error and the adaptive filter output signal[3-4] .
II. MERITS AND DEMERITS OF PROPOSED ANC
FRAMEWORK
A feedback based ANC model has been developed for
wideband noise cancellation purposes. A feedforward ANC
system has a better convergence speed than the feedback ANC
but it faces some stability issues. Acoustic feedback problem

occurs in feedforward ANC where the anti-noise at the

cancelling loudspeaker radiates the signals back to the
secondary microphone disturbing the reference signal. This
reduces the Signal to Noise ratio (SNR) of the system.
Feedback ANC does not have this issue as it uses only a single
microphone.
In theory, between the reference microphone and the
cancelling loudspeaker no acoustic noise is generated. In such
systems, Least Mean Square (LMS), Normalized Least Mean
Square (NLMS), Variable Step Size LMS (VSS LMS) and
other such algorithms are efficient. In reality, a secondary
transfer function exists between the reference microphone and
the cancelling loudspeaker. This is because in an ANC system
a number of components exist like analog to digital convertors
and sensors.To deal with this problem the Filtered-x-LMS
(FXLMS) algorithm has been developed where, offline
modelling is initially done. In offline modelling the secondary
A

transfer function S(z) is estimated in terms of a S(z) using

a gradient search based method. Then online modelling is
applied to reduce noise in ANC.
The problem with both, the FXLMS algorithm and the
Feedback based ANC system is the low convergence speed.
To improve this convergence speed, modifications have been
done at both the online modelling as well as the offline
modelling. In the offline system identification, the NLMS
algorithm has been used in the proposed algorithm due to its
superior convergence speed and stability over the LMS
algorithm at the cost of some computational complexity[5-6].
The step size plays a crucial role in the performance of an
algorithm. The advantage of a largest
is faster rate of

convergence. But a smaller

will result in a better steady

state performance. Online modelling in the proposed

algorithm, varies the step size
based on a sigmoid function

[7-8]. A sigmoid function is a mathematical function in the

form of:

1
x(t)=-
l+e-'

(2)

The step size is also convergent in nature and will not

increase to infinity. In the proposed algorithm we set the step
size in a modified form of a sigmoid function. This has been
done, to change the value of
with every iteration based on

the error output of the ANC.

III.

SIMULATION SETUP

The setup or the flow of simulation of the proposed

algorithm has been presented in this section to implement it on
MATLAB. First, the offline modelling of the system using the
proposed algorithm has been performed where the estimation
of the secondary transfer function has been performed. Online
modelling has been performed after that where noise
cancellation application is performed by an advance FXLMS
algorithm. The structure of the feedback FXLMS algorithm is
given in fig.2.

Fig.2. Feedback ANC system model

In the given system,

P(z) is the primary path transfer

function where d (n) is the output of this system including

the corrupted noise signal. S(z) is the secondary order
transfer function present in the system due to various
A

components present. S(z) is the estimated secondary order

transfer function based on an offline algorithm [9].

A. Offline Modelling
The first step includes offline modelling of the ANC
feedback system. We have chosen the system to be a feedback
FXLMS type. Hence, a white gaussian noise is initially used
for estimation of the secondary path transfer function S(z).

S(z) is estimated as the coefficients are not known in

practical applications. NLMS algorithm is implemented in the
offline modelling of the proposed ANC framework. A dummy
transfer function is initially assumed with some coefficients.
We let the coefficient of the secondary path transfer function
estimated be [so, SI"

"SM -I ] '

The response of the offline

modelling system will then be:

M-l

r(n)= z>,(n)y(n - i)

(3)

i=O

This response function is used to calculate the error in the

offline model which is different from the error function in a
simple adaptive system. This is given by:

e'en)= e(n) - r(n)

(4)

The coefficient update can only take place once this is

calculated. NLMS algorithm is implemented as the gradient
based search algorithm to estimate the secondary transfer
function. The weight update equation takes place as:

s;(n+1)=s/n) +

. ,
. r!(n)y(n-i)
(y(n-z).y(n-z)}

(5)

y(n - i) is the output vector from the white noise generator

ex

for different instances of time.

B.

Online Modelling
After offline modelling we get the estimated values of

[so' sp ...sM -I]' Online modelling or the noise cancellation

procedure can then begin. For online modelling, a variable

step size FXLMS is used in a feedback type ANC system. The
reference signal is first estimated by:

x(n) = e(n)-y'(n)

y'(n) is the adaptive filter output passed through a

secondary transfer function. e(n) is the error, which is the
difference between the desired signal and the adaptive filter
output. The adaptive output or the anti-noise is generated next
after we get the reference input for the first iteration. This is
given by:
N

yen) = L wi(n)x(n-i)

(7)

1=1

In the above equation,

Wi(n) are the filter weight

coefficients and N is the order of the filter. Once the adaptive

filter output is generated, the adaptive filter weights get
updated for the next iteration. Since FXLMS is the algorithm
selected for noise cancellation, the input signal is filtered
initially. This is given by:
M

x'(n) = Lcix(n-i)

E[(n)]-min

(11)

Here, the later term is the minimum MSE in any adaptive

system unique to the system itself. To further improve the
convergence speed of the algorithm, the sigmoid function can
be made adaptive in nature. If P and a are made to vary
with iterations, better results may be obtained. The system can
also be made robust by setting the initial value of step size
based on the application.
IV.

(6)

Here

SIMULATION

AND RESULTS

The new algorithm has been compared to the conventional

Feedforward FXLMS algorithm for noise cancelling. A
Gaussian white noise signal has been considered as the input
signal. The taken Gaussian signal has a variance of 1 and a
mean of O. Three types of simulations have been carried out.
The offline modelling has been carried out fust, where the
system identification error graph was attained. Then online
modelling was carried out where fust the residual noise signal
graph was attained giving an idea of the algorithm's speed of
convergence and stability. Then the tracking of the noise
signal by the adaptive control signal was plotted.

A. Offline Modelling
Offline modelling of both the algorithms were performed.
MATLAB was chosen to be the platform for the
implementation. System Identification for the approximation
of the secondary transfer function was inferred from the
graphs.

(8)

1=1

The weights are then updated once the input signal has been
filtered. This is given by:

Wen + 1) = wen) + Ilx'(n-i)e(n)

(9)

As Il in the proposed algorithm is variable and

IS

sigmoid based mathematical function [lO]. We can express

this step size as:

0.5 1--.----,-,--,---,---.--;:===:::::;1
-Idenlificalionerror

O.A
11)
'0

03

,e 02
C. 0.1
E
0

mO'-----'--:':-W--,-,OO':---,-I:,W:---:Y1:O:--::'29J:--:llJ=':--::'JW':---c':4OJ--,-4W':-:'W]
Discrete time k

(10)
Fig.3. System Identification Error of proposed algorithm

and a are different constants that limit the step size to

a particular range of values. The value of the step size clearly
varies from a larger step size

III to a smaller step size

112 by

setting proper values to the constants. Thus, the system

initially has a larger value of step size which can reduce the
majority of noise at a fast convergence rate. After achieving a
small MSE, further reduction is possible as the value of the
step size also decreases. This continues till the step size attains
the value 1l2. A small amount of MSE would still be present
as ideally it would take infinite number of iterations to attain a
zero MSE which is based on the channel characteristics. This
excess MSE is given by the equation:

O,r;---.----,----,---,---,---,---.-r
_="'I
d "=::;:
"" 'C', ,=,"'=,,,'il,

0.6

.(I.6 0\-'-----,!;
- 50---;!;;;lOO ----;
, 50,;, ---:;
-- t;--ro
- 250;;---lll
---,;350';---;!;
;- 400;----;4
;
;;C
50 --,!.""
Discrete time k

Fig.4. System Identification Error of conventional FXLMS

algorithm

Suitable parameters were taken for the implementation of

the proposed algorithm. The number of iterations were taken
to be 500. The step size value for the proposed algorithm was
taken to be 0.6, which utilizes a NLMS based adaptive
algorithm. The system identification error for the proposed
algorithm has been graphed in Fig.3. while that of the
proposed algorithm has been graphed in Fig.4. Both the
algorithms successfully converge to give 0 identification error
eventually. However, the proposed algorithm, achieves this
taking less number of iterations. From the simulations the
proposed algorithm takes around a 120 iterations to converge
but the conventional algorithm takes more than 350 iterations
to converge. Thus, the proposed algorithm converges faster
than the conventional algorithm by around 230 iterations
showing its superior nature.

Signal Tracking

B.

After the offline simulations, the ANC starts to perform using

the FXLMS algorithm for the conventional ANC system and
the proposed sigmoid based function, for the proposed
algorithm. The signal tracking was fust performed where a
control noise signal suppresses the noise signal present in the
ANC system. Simulations were again performed on the
MATLAB platform taking the number of iterations to be 500.
The value of the step size was taken to be 0.01 for the
algorithms. The signal tracking of the proposed algorithm has
been simulated in fig.5. while that of the conventional FXLMS
algorithm has been simulated in Fig.6.

From the simulations obtained, it is clear that the proposed

algorithm tracks the noise signal more efficiently than the
conventional FXLMS algorithm. By around 300 iterations
itself most of the noise signal is cancelled effectively. Also the
cancellation of noise signal seen is more uniform than that of
the conventional algorithm. This proves that the feedback
based algorithm is more stable than the conventional
algorithm as well. This online modelling is the most important
part of the ANC system and the proposed algorithm can be
proved to be more efficient in convergence speed as well as
stability in the way it reduces the noise signals.
C.

Residual Noise

The residual noise is the left over noise signal in the ANC
system. There is always a residual noise left in the system
which can be determined by the excess MSE of the system.
This can also be calculated from the signal tracking
simulations as the difference between the noise signal and the
control signal. The parameters taken for the implementation of
the algorithms are the same as that for signal tracking.
The residual noise in the proposed algorithm has been
simulated in Fig.7. taking MATLAB as the platform while that
of the conventional algorithm has been simulated in Fig.8.

1.5 1-,-------,--,--r---,-===:::::;]
- Noise residue

L-----:50L---:-100-'::--:I-'::-50---::ru":---:2ffic'-:---:1llc'-:---:350c'-:--400-'-:--4-:-':50,--,J500

40

Discrete time k
Fig.5. Signal Tracking of the proposed algorithm

Fig.7. Residual Noise of the proposed algorithm

- Noiseffisidue

Q)
'C

II)
'0
::J

21

:: 0

0. 0
E
-I

a.

E
<{

-2

- 0L500----:50L---:1"-:-OO--Ic'-:50--:ru:-"-:--:-'-2ffi:--::"1ll::--:-'350:--:400L--4-'::-50--,J

Discrete time k
Fig.6. Signal Tracking of the conventional FXLMS algorithm

LL----'
-3,L----:-'
9LO5 J
--:- I9 ]---;o
--:- ...L.]
o -29--'--'OO
--'45] -:mL-J9] -0
4 0
0
0
I ------'-

Discrete time k
Fig.8. Residual Noise of the conventional algorithm

[10] Rupp, M. ; Sayed, A.H. 'Two variants of the FxLMS algorithm",

The residual noise of the proposed as well as the conventional

algorithms were obtained by the residual noise simulation
graphs. From the graphs it is clear that the noise residue in the
proposed algorithm is much less than the conventional
algorithms. It can also be cross verified from this that the
tracking of the proposed algorithm is much better than the
conventional algorithm. From the graphs, the noise residue of
the conventional FXLMS algorithm is much more uneven
with sharp troughs and crests along the graph. The MSE of the
algorithms can be calculated using the square of the
amplitudes in these graphs over the iterations.
V.

CONCLUSION

Several parameters like SNR, convergence speed and

steady state performance are the indicators of how good an
algorithm theoretically performs.
FXLMS algorithms has
emerged as the most popular algorithm for noise and echo
cancellation over the past few decades. The algorithm is very
stable but it has a slow convergent rate. To increase its
convergent speed the step size can be modified or varied. In
this paper, a sigmoid type of convergent function to improve
the speed of convergence of the algorithm by varying the step
size has been used. Different adaptive algorithms are used for
different adaptive processes depending on their characteristics
like speed of convergence, robustness and stability. The
proposed algorithm uses various properties of different
structures and algorithms for offline and online modelling. It
has been shown that the proposed algorithm is more efficient
in removing noise signals than the conventional FXLMS
algorithm.
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