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A new online secondary path modelling method for feedforward active noise
control systems

Conference Paper · May 2008

DOI: 10.1109/ICIT.2008.4608475 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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Pooya Davari H. Hassanpour

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A New Online Secondary Path Modelling Method for
Feedforward Active Noise Control Systems
Pooya Davari and Hamid Hassanpour
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mazandaran University,
Shariatee Av, Babol, Iran,
pdavari@stu.nit.ac.ir , h.hassanpour@nit.ac.ir
Abstract- An Online secondary path modelling method using
a white noise as a training signal is required in many applications
of active noise control (ANC) to ensure convergence of the
system. Not continually injection of white noise during system
operation makes the system more desirable. The purposes of the
proposed method are two folds: controlling white noise by
preventing continually injection, and benefiting white noise with
a larger variance. The modelling accuracy and the convergence
rate increase when a white noise with larger variance is used,
however larger the variance increases the residual noise, which
decreases performance of the system. This paper proposes a new
approach for online secondary path modelling in feedfoward
ANC systems. The proposed algorithm uses the advantages of the
white noise with larger variance to model the secondary path, but
the injection is stopped at the optimum point to increase
performance of the system. Comparative simulation results
shown in this paper indicate effectiveness of the proposed
approach in controlling active noise.
I. INTRODUCTION
With the growth of industrial equipments such as: fans,
engines, compressors, and transformers acoustic noises
become a serious problem. Active noise control (ANC) is a
technique that efficiently attenuates low frequencies unwanted
noises where passive methods are either ineffective or tend to
be very expensive or bulky. An ANC system is based on a
destructive interference of an anti-noise with equal amplitude
and opposite phase replica primary noise (the unwanted
noise). Following the superposition principle, the result is
cancellation or reduction of both noises [1]. The effect raised
by the secondary path transfer function, the path leading from
the noise controller output to the error sensor measuring the
residual noise, generally causes instability to the standard least
mean square (LMS) algorithm. In general FxLMS algorithm
[1] is used to overcome the instability problem. The FxLMS
algorithm uses estimation of the secondary path to reimburse
the problem raised by the transfer function.
In practical cases the secondary paths are usually time
varying or non-linear, which leads to a poor performance or
system instability. Therefore, online modelling of secondary
path is required to ensure convergence of the ANC algorithm
[2, 3, 4, 5].
Most of online secondary path modelling techniques entail
injection of the additional random noise as a training signal to
afford the felicitous estimation of the secondary path [1].
White noise is usually utilized as an ideal training signal in
978-1-4244-1706-3/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE.
modelling the secondary path [3, 4, 5]. White noise with larger
variance improves modelling accuracy and convergence rate
[5], nevertheless, with the cost of an increased residual noise.
Thus, existing online secondary path modelling techniques use
white noise with a low variance (usually 0.05 variance) to
model the secondary path in order to sustain a low residual
noise in steady state.
The proposed system is based on an FxLMS algorithm as a
main part of the system. The system uses a variable step size
(VSS) LMS algorithm [4] to adapt the modelling filter of the
secondary path. The proposed algorithm uses white noise with
a large variance (as large as 0.8) in modelling the secondary
path. However, to increase performance of the algorithm and
to prevent the instability effect raised by the large variance
white noise, the VSS-LMS algorithm is stopped at the
optimum point. This increases noise attenuation and allows
benefiting advantages of white noise with a larger variance. In
addition, not having the white noise makes the system more
desirable as continuous existence of the noise in the
environment may have an unpleasant result.
A sudden change in the secondary path leads to divergence
of the online secondary path modelling filter. To abate this
problem, the proposed algorithm is designed in the way that it
controls the secondary path changes. A sudden change in
secondary path during the operation makes the algorithm to
reactivate injection of the white noise to modify the secondary
path estimation.
Common secondary path modelling methods use off-line
estimation of the secondary path prior to online modelling [3,
4]. Off-line estimation can be obtained when the primary noise
is absent. However, in many practical cases the primary noise
exists even during the off-line modeling. This adversely
affects the accuracy of the modeling filter. Therefore, the
proposed method models the secondary path without the need
of using off-line estimation of the secondary path. Considering
the above features in the proposed method assists obtaining a
better convergence rate and modelling accuracy, which results
in a robust system. We show that this online estimation of the
secondary path has no impact on the accuracy of the
estimation.
The organization of this paper is as follows. In section 2, the
feedforward ANC system is briefly described. Section 3
introduces online secondary path modeling method and the
proposed approach. In section 4, we illustrate our simulation
results, and finally in Section five conclusions are drawn.
Fig. 1. Block diagram of feedforward ANC system using FxLMS algorithm.
II. FEEDFORWARD ANC SYSTEM
Transfer function of the secondary path has a crucial role in
generating anti-noise in ANC applications as it is non-linear
and introduces delay causing instability problem to the
standard LMS algorithm. The instability problem can be
resolved using the FxLMS algorithm [1] as it uses estimation
of the secondary path. This algorithm can be applied to both
feedback and feedforward structures. The block diagram of a
feedforward FxLMS ANC system is shown in Fig. 1 [1]. Here,
P(z) is the primary path, the acoustic response from the
reference noise source to the error sensor; and S(z) represents
the secondary path. In this figure, Sˆ ( z ) is estimation of the
secondary path S(z).
The secondary signal y(n) is generated as:
y (n) = wT (n) x (n),
where w(n) and x(n) are the coefficient and signal vectors of
length L, order of the FIR filter W(z), at time n. These
coefficients are updated by the FxLMS algorithm as follows:
wl (n + 1) = wl ( n) + μx′( n − 1)e( n)
l = 0,1,..., L − 1 , μ > 0 ,
where μ is the step size, and
xˆ ′(n) = Sˆ ( n) ∗ x( n) ,
is the filtered reference signal. For a deep study on
feedforward FxLMS algorithm the reader may refer to [1].
Fig. 2. Eriksson’s method [3] for ANC system with online secondary path
modelling.
Fig. 3. Akhtar’s method [4] for ANC system with online secondary path
modelling.
III. ON LINE SECONDARY PATH MODELING METHOD
A. Existing Approaches
The basic online secondary path modelling method which
used random noise as a training signal (Fig. 2) was proposed
by Eriksson et. al [6]. This method introduced another
adaptive filter to model S(z) during online operation of ANC
system. Several methods have later been proposed which
could improve performance of the Eriksson’s method. Among
the most recent online secondary path modelling methods [2]-
[8], the method presented by Akhtar et. al [4] appears the best
choice. Since the proposed method is based on Akhtar’s
algorithm, here we briefly described this algorithm [4].
Consider Akhtar’s method [4] shown in Fig. 3. The residual
error signal e(n) of this algorithm is expressed as:
e(n) = d ( n) − y′(n) + v′( n)
(1) (4)
y ′( n) = s( n) ∗ y ( n) , v′(n ) = s (n ) ∗ v(n) ,
where v(n) is an internally generated white Gaussian noise,
which is injected at the output of the control filter W(z).
In this figure Sˆ ( z ) is the modelling FIR filter with length M
(2) that generates vˆ′(n) expressed below:
vˆ ′( n) = sˆ T (n)v M ( n) . (5)
As the figure shows, vˆ′(n) generates the error signal for both
the modelling filter Sˆ ( z ) and the control filter W(z) by
(3)
subtracting from e(n):
f (n) = [d (n) − y′(n) + v′(n)] − vˆ′(n) . (6)
Coefficients of the modelling filter Sˆ ( z ) are updated as
follows:
sˆ(n + 1) = sˆ(n) + μ s (n) f (n)v(n) , (7)
where μ s (n) is the step-size parameter of the VSS-LMS
algorithm which will be explained later.
Finally coefficients of the control filter W(z) are updated as
below:
w(n + 1) = w(n) + μ w (n) f (n) xˆ′(n) . (9)
The input to the LMS algorithm is derived by filtering the
reference signal through Sˆ ( z ) :
xˆ ′( n ) = sˆT ( n ) x M ( n ) , (10)
where xM (n) = [ x(n), x (n − 1),..., x(n − M + 1)]T is an M sample
reference signal.
The VSS-LMS algorithm is used to update modelling filter
Sˆ ( z ) coefficients. For more detail on theory of this algorithm
reader may refer to [4]. As we mentioned before, the
modelling filter in equation (7) is updated using the step-size
parameter ( μ s (n) ) of VSS-LMS algorithm and this parameter
is calculated using the following three steps [4]:
• Initially, the power of error signals e(n) and f(n) are
computed:
Pe (n ) = λPe ( n − 1) + (1 − λ )e 2 ( n)
(11)
Pf (n) = λPf (n − 1) + (1 − λ ) f 2 (n) .
• Then, the ratio of the estimated powers is obtained:
ρ (n) = Pf (n) / Pe (n) .
(12)
ρ (0) ≈ 1 , limn → ∞ ρ (n) → 0
• Finally, the step size is calculated as follows:
μ s (n) = ρ (n) μ s min + (1 − ρ (n))μ s max , (13)
where μ s min , μ s max and λ are experimentally determined.
Using VSS-LMS algorithm increases the modelling accuracy
and correspondingly improves system performance. Indeed,
Akhtar’s method completely provided these features.
B. Proposed Method
As mentioned before, preventing continuous injection of
white noise during system operation makes the system more
desirable and increased noise attenuation. The main purpose of
the proposed method is to control white noise by preventing
continually injection to improve the system performance. This
ability makes the system to benefit the large variance white
noise and to overcome its disadvantages. White noise with
larger variance results in a better modelling accuracy and
convergence rate [5]. However, larger the variance increases
the residual noise, which decreases performance of the system.
Existing online secondary path modelling techniques [2]-[8]
control the secondary path changes during system operation
by continuous injection of white noise. Thus, these methods
use white noise with a low variance to model the secondary
path in order to maintain a lower residual noise in steady state.
To use the advantage of large variance white noise and to
adapt the system for secondary path changes, we propose a
new system on the basis of Akhtar’s method [4]. The proposed
method modifies the Akhtar’s algorithm to achieve a higher
system performance. Fig. 4 shows block diagram of the
proposed ANC system.
To increase performance of the algorithm and to prevent the
disadvantages of the white noise, the VSS-LMS algorithm is
stopped at the optimum point. This increases noise attenuation
and allows benefiting the advantages of white noise with a
large variance.
Here, the VSS-LMS algorithm is briefly described to show the
way the optimum point is obtained. The VSS-LMS algorithm
is initially set to a small step size. During the process of this
Fig. 4. Block diagram of the proposed feedforward ANC system.
algorithm, μ s is increased as the error signal f(n) decreases
and vice versa. It needs to be noted that any increase of the
step size corresponds to a faster convergence of the adaptive
algorithm. Consequently, once W(z) is slow in reducing e(n),
the step size remains small which results in a lower
convergence rate. Hence, the modeling filter, Sˆ ( z ) , converges
to a good estimation when f(n) decreases. This happens when
μ s increases as high as μ s max . Thus, the injection of the white
noise is stopped at the optimum point which is measured
using:
μ s max − μ s < α , 1 × 10 −5 < α ≤ 1 × 10 −3 . (14)
As can be seen from Fig. 4, this condition validity is
monitored at the performance monitoring stage. By
setting α to a lower value, the modelling error as well as the
convergence rate is decreased, which results in an accurate
modelling of the secondary path.
In some practical cases the secondary path may suddenly
change. This event derives system to diverge. To prevent this
effect, Sˆ ( z ) needs to be updated.
The proposed algorithm is design in such a way that it can
monitor the secondary path changes by the following
expression:
20 log10 f (n) < 0 . (15)
If the validity of the above equation does not satisfy, the
system reactivates the VSS-LMS algorithm and injects white
noise to remodel Sˆ ( z ) . The same as before, the injection is
stopped at the optimum point using (14). The above procedure
is repeated during the system operation to adapt the algorithm
with characteristics of the environment. As can be seen, the
proposed algorithm controls the white noise injection by using
(14) and (15), which results in a high performance system.
Estimation of the secondary path can be obtained by using
the off-line modeling method followed by an online modeling.
However, as mentioned before, in some applications the
primary noise exists even during the off-line modeling in
which adversely affects the accuracy of the modeling filter.
Therefore, with the advantages of the large variance white
noise, there is no need of using off-line estimation of the
secondary path in the proposed approach as it is required in
the existing methods [3,4].
 The parameters for Eriksson’s method are adjusted
as μ w = 5 × 10 −4 and μ s = 1 × 10 −2 . These parameters are
exactly set following [4], and for the proposed method we set
α to 1.65 ×10 −4 . To show the convergence rate and modelling
accuracy of the system we use relative modelling error defined
as below:
­ M −1 2½
° ¦ [ si ( n) − sˆi ( n)] °
° °
ΔS (dB ) = 10 log10 ® i = 0 M −1 ¾ (16)
(a) ° 2 °
¦ [ si ( n)]
°¯ i=0 °¿
To signify performance of the system on noise reduction the
following equation is used:
§ 2 ·
R = −10 log10 ¨¨ ¦ e (n) ¸ (17)
¦ d ( n) ¸¹
2
©
The larger the positive value of R indicates that the more noise
reduction is achieved. All the results shown in these cases are
averaged on 10 experiments.
(b) A. Case1
Fig. 5. Magnitude response of the acoustic paths (Solid line: Original path,
Here we show the effect of controlling the injection of white
Dashed line: Changed path at n=20,000): (a) Magnitude response of the noise during operation. In this case we compared the proposed
primary path P(z), (b) Magnitude response of the secondary path S(z). approach with Akhtar’s method. Both methods evaluated
under the situations defined in [4] using white noise with two
IV. SIMULATIONS RESULTS and PERFORMANCE different variances. To set the initial value for Sˆ ( z ) ( ŝ (0) ),
EVALUATION
offline secondary path modeling is performed. The off-line
In this section the proposed ANC system is simulated using
modeling is stopped when the modeling error (16) has been
Matlab version 7.1. In this simulation, we have used the
reduced to -5 dB.
primary path P(z) and secondary path S(z) of the experimental
data provided in [9]. The impulse responses of the primary and
secondary paths are shown in Fig. 5.
Using these data, P(z) and S(z) are considered as FIR filters
with tap–weight lengths 48 and 16 respectively. Rate of the
sampling frequency in this simulation was 2KHz.
Comprehensive experiments have been performed to find
appropriate values for a fast and stable performance of the
ANC system. Length of FIR filter Sˆ ( z ) for modelling the
secondary path, and length of the adaptive filter W(z) used for
the noise cancellation have been chosen 16 and 32,
respectively. (a)
In this simulations performance of the proposed method is
compared with that of Akhtar’s [4] and Eriksson’s method [6].
We have performed simulations for two separate cases. We
have performed simulations for three separate cases. In Case1,
performance of the proposed method is evaluated in using
both low and large variance white noises. Case2 shows the
advantage of using a large variance white noise. Finally Case3
indicates effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in
maintaining its performance against sudden changes of the
acoustic paths behaviour. In these Cases the reference noise is
a narrowband signal comprising frequencies of 100, 200, 300,
and 400 Hz. Its variance is adjusted to 2, and a white noise
(b)
with SNR of 30 dB is added. The parameters for the proposed
Fig. 6. Performance comparison between proposed method and the other
method and Akhtar’s method are adjusted
existing methods: (a) Noise reduction achieved by white noise with variance
as μ w = 5 × 10 −4 , μ smin = 75 × 10 −4 , μ smax = 25 × 10−3 and λ = 0.99 . of 0.05, (b) Noise reduction achieved by white noise with variance of 0.8.
 Fig. 7. Modeling error versus iteration time n. Fig. 8. Noise reduction versus iteration time n.

Fig. 6a shows that before proposed algorithm reached to the

optimum point both plots are stick together, but after stopping
the injection of the white noise at the optimum point proposed
algorithm plot suddenly changed its path. As can be seen
comparing with the other method the proposed method obtain
more noise reduction. As Fig. 6b shows, the proposed method
achieves a higher performance in using a larger variance white
noise, in contradict, performance of two other methods is
reduced by increasing the white noise variance. This is due to
the non-stopping injection of white noise during the operation.
B. Case2
As mentioned before, using offline estimation prior to (a)
online modeling procedure may cause problems for ANC
system. Not using offline estimation decreases convergence
rate and may affect on modeling accuracy. Using white noise
with a large variance in secondary path modeling compensates
these problems. As can be resulted from Case1, the proposed
system not only eliminates the disadvantages of the large
variance white noise but also benefits from its advantages.
In this case, the proposed method is evaluated in terms of
modeling accuracy and noise reduction, and the results are
compared with the other methods. We use offline estimation
(described in Case1) and white noise with variance 0.05 for
the other methods. The proposed method uses white noise
with variance 0.8 without using offline estimation. The (b)
comparative results are illustrated using (16) and (17) in Fig. 7 Fig. 9. Simulation results. (a) Relative modeling error versus iteration time n,
and 8. (b) Modeling filter step size versus iteration time n.
As can be seen, the proposed method, without using offline
estimation, achieved a better performance compared to two
other methods.
C. Case3
In this case, it is assumed that both the primary and the
secondary paths transfer functions are suddenly changed
during the operation.
Fig. 5 shows the magnitude response of the original and
changed path. In this figure, the solid line represents the
secondary path at start point, n = 0, and the dashed line
represents the changed path at iteration n = 20000. Both
methods are set under the condition described in [4], except
that the proposed method is evaluated using white noise with
variance 0.8. Fig. 10. Noise reduction versus iteration time n.
The modeling error (16) and modeling filter step size are
shown in Fig. 9, and the noise reduction (17) is shown in Fig.
10. As can be seen the proposed method maintains its
performance with higher convergence rate. The importance is
that the proposed method achieves a higher noise reduction
(R) and convergence rate compared to the other methods.

V. CONCLUSIONS
This paper proposed a new method for online secondary
path modelling in ANC systems. Computer simulations have
been conducted for a single-channel feedforward ANC
system. Simulation results demonstrated that the proposed
method achieves a higher convergence rate, a more accurate
modelling accuracy, and a better noise reduction performance
compared with the existing approach. Eliminating continuous
injection of the white noise and not initially using off-line
secondary path estimation makes the proposed method more
desirable for practical ANC systems.

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